


Reunion

by notaguitarfret



Series: "They're all girlfriends" AU [39]
Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Developing Friendships, F/F, Fluff, cws in each authors note, with a bit of angst juice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:02:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 59,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26854156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notaguitarfret/pseuds/notaguitarfret
Summary: Heather Chandler finally returns to school. Antics ensue.
Relationships: Heather Chandler & Betty Finn, Heather Chandler & Jason "J. D." Dean, Heather Chandler & Martha Dunnstock, Heather Chandler/Heather Duke, Heather Chandler/Heather Duke/Heather McNamara/Veronica Sawyer, Heather Chandler/Heather McNamara, Heather Chandler/Veronica Sawyer, Heather Duke/Heather McNamara, Heather Duke/Heather McNamara/Veronica Sawyer, Heather Duke/Veronica Sawyer, Heather McNamara/Veronica Sawyer
Series: "They're all girlfriends" AU [39]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1053590
Comments: 54
Kudos: 211





	1. Day One

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: homophobia, transphobia, homophobic slurs, transphobic slurs, references to ED

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”

Heather blinked open heavy eyes, sunlight burning her eyes with its brightness. She groaned, burying her head into the pillow that felt different to how it usually did, and when she realised the difference in texture, she remembered that she wasn’t in her own home.

“Heather, I have breakfast for you, now wake up.”

She groaned again - being nagged in the morning wasn’t something she signed up for when she accepted Heather’s invitation to stay here, but the smell of food was making her stomach rumble more and more. She opened her eyes again, shielding them from the light with her arm and looked up at Duke, fully clothed with a bright red outfit that could have blinded her and a small plate in her hand.

“What food is it?” she grumbled, sitting up and wiping her eyes.

“Toast. I can get you cereal if you want.” She sat down on the bed and placed the plate on her lap. Heather saw through her blurry vision that there were three slices sitting there. “I just figured toast would be convenient, since then I could have breakfast too.”

Heather frowned at her. “You didn’t get your own?”

“No questioning my eating habits, be grateful I’m having something other than a breakfast bar.” She took a slice and handed the plate over, leaving Heather two slices. “Next time I can get you nutella or something if you want.”

“You know me, I have a sweet tooth,” she grunted, biting into it. It was too overdone for her liking, but she wasn’t about to complain about Duke making her breakfast, even if it were something as simple as throwing some bread into a toaster. “You weirdo - you like almost _burnt_ bread?”

“It’s not burnt!”

“Ten more seconds in the toaster and it would have been.”

Duke rolled her eyes. “You act like I know _anything_ about cooking.”

“It’s toast.”

“You act as if I know anything about any food that isn’t cereal.”

“Well, do yourself a favour and never live with _only_ Veronica.” 

“Why?”

“You’ll either starve or go broke from ordering takeout.”

“Well, I know a lot about-” Duke cut herself off, toast hovering inches away from her mouth as her brow furrowed. “Not gonna make that joke,” she then said, slowly taking another, albeit hesitant bite.

“You always make jokes.”

“I’m trying to lighten the mood as best I can.”

"Why, because today's gonna go to shit?" Heather said with a smile, batting her lashes. Duke rolled her eyes.

"Not if you don't let it."

"How motivational. You ought to be the next Ms Fleming."

"I think _anyone_ would make a better counsellor than her."

"I have to agree," Heather huffed. "Let's just hope she kept our little _talk_ we had the other day completely confidential."

"Why? What did you tell her?"

"That I was a rape victim who suffered because of her irresponsible actions. But you know, I said more than just that."

Duke deadpanned at her. "Was that really a good idea."

Heather shrugged. "Guess we'll find out." She wanted to be nonchalant about it, but in reality, Heather was nervous to even look at the clock, the thought of returning to school again being so daunting to her. Not only did she have a new appearance, but she would most definitely bump into Veronica and Mac again - Veronica most likely being first, what with them having a class together first thing on a Monday. Oh, joy, she couldn't wait to see how that went down.

And she wouldn't have to wait long, she knew.

* * *

"You think they're going to fall for that every morning?"

"If we're careful enough."

A solution Duke had come up with to get Heather out of the house past her parents in the mornings was to say that Heather was in the house to pick up Duke for school. Her mother had bought it, albeit seemed skeptical as to why she somehow got in the house undetected, but Duke talked her way out of being questioned and made a run for it. Now, it was Heather driving them to what she knew would be an inevitable disaster. It couldn’t possibly be anything else.

“Ugh, this feels surreal,” she grumbled as the school grew closer and closer, until she was driving past the building and the many students that were already swarming into the building. She could tell she was later than she usually would be - but it wasn’t like she had anyone to meet anywhere, so why arrive early? “I know I haven’t been gone for that long, but it feels _weird._ ”

“You’ll get back into your routine soon enough,” Duke said. Heather just snorted.

“ _What_ routine? I’m going to be sitting _alone_ at lunch.”

“Well, I mean…” Duke twiddled her thumbs. “ _Maybe_ you won’t be.” 

Heather rolled her eyes as she searched for a good spot to park her car. “You don’t have to sit with me,” she grunted. “I don’t want to cause a divide between you and Veronica and Mac. Just sit with them.”

“I’ll just see how I feel. I don’t always sit with them anyway.”

“You don’t?” She pulled up into a space away from most cars - she always did get paranoid about dumbass drivers parking badly and scraping their cars against her Porsche. She was surprised it hadn’t happened yet.

“Well, they kinda sit with Martha, Betty and JD, and, um… you know, eating in front of new people.” She unbuckled herself from her seat. “It puts me off.”

“Oh.” Heather frowned. “Well, feel free to sit with me then.”

“Thanks.” She stepped out of the car and so did Heather, and as the two girls dressed in bright red - Duke admittedly brighter than her due to wearing less grey - a rumbling engine grew closer from behind. Heather paid no attention to it until it swerved around right in front of them. It made them both stumble backwards in fright, that is until Heather got a good look at the person riding the motorcycle.

“Welcome back to hell, bitch,” JD spoke in his usual monotone voice that no longer grated on Heather like it used to, instead making her snicker in amusement as he scrounged around the pockets of his trenchcoat for something, until he finally pulled out a party popper and pulled the string, letting the confetti fall onto Heather. She blew some of it out of her face and pulled the rest of it out of her hair and flipped him off.

“Nice greeting, asshole.”

“Thanks. You want a slushie? Might be a bit melted.”

“I don’t want one, but I might need one.”

“Cool.” He pulled out a coke slushie from one of his abnormally large pockets, and though the cup was smushed and the drink was indeed quite melted, it was still cold in her palm - especially soothing on her injured hand - and so Heather didn’t care. Not even about that fact that it was obviously half-finished and therefore, the straw she was using had already been used by JD.

“Thanks, somehow this is better than coffee.”

“Soon you’ll be saying the same thing about cigarettes.”

“We’ll see about that.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up for a brief second, before he drove off again, likely to find a good parking space for his bike. As they waited for the exhaust fumes to thin, Heather noticed that Duke was staring at her with a confused look.

“What?”

“What do you mean, _what?_ That’s what I should be asking - what was _that?_ ”

Heather shrugged. Truth be told, she wasn’t entirely sure either, nor did she care too much. She just went with it. “Dunno, friendly interaction.”

“Since _when?_ I thought you hated JD.”

“Now that’s a harsh assumption.”

“It isn’t in the slightest.”

Heather gave an exasperated sigh and kept walking. “So we may have spoken a few times over the past few weeks and I decided that he wasn’t so bad.”

“Seriously?” Duke scoffed at the very thought, and Heather couldn’t blame her. She would have done the same less than a month ago. “Does he think the same about you?”

“Huh?”

“That you’re not so bad?”

Heather pondered on it, and decided that it was literally impossible to figure out what was going on in that boy’s head just by reading his expressions and actions.

“I can only hope,” she said.

The walk to the school’s entrance felt long, even though it only took a few minutes. Less people were walking up the steps by the time they got there, however when they walked inside, it was a different story. Students were everywhere, as they tended to be around this time, eager to say hello to friends before registration was taken and classes began. Heather tried to not let her hesitance show as she walked, remembering to keep her posture straight and her chin up. It didn’t go unnoticed, either. Heads turned towards her and Duke and students shuffled out of their way, just like they used to, though she could pick up on an underlying uncertainty among them. Mainly with how eyes lingered on her hair, or perhaps, lack of. Either that, or lack of scrunchie _because_ of the lack of hair, which still felt incredibly odd to her. She felt like a queen with no crown.

“Heather! You’re back!”

The voice of who she assumed - and was correct in that assumption - was a preppy girl hurrying over to her made her stop in her tracks.

“Oh my gosh it has been _ages,_ ” another voice - this one male - drew closer.

“Your hair is different! Did you cut it?” yet another voice.

“Why did you cut it?”

“It looks pretty!"

“I miss your long hair though.”

And before she knew it, Duke was being pushed aside by several people, growing more and more bold as to welcome her back. Heather didn’t know who to respond to first - several students were talking at once and she could only tune into one person at a time, it was simply impossible, and honestly irritating. Who even _were_ these people and since when did people _waltz up to her_ like it was no big deal? Either way, she hated it, and began to grumble for everyone to move out of her way and even shoved herself through the small crowd that had accumulated around her, though that turned out to not be such a great idea as she didn’t see any of the people standing behind them until it was too late.

“Oh, shit.”

Some poor nerd who had just been trying to get by had been on the other side of Courtney clone number 4, and had been the one who Heather had collided with. Her slushie was crushed and therefore liquid shot out of the straw and sprayed against her chin and chest. The nerd had fallen to the floor, textbooks and worksheets scattered around her feet and stared up at her like helpless prey accepting death to a hawk.

“I- I didn’t see you there,” he stammered. “I mean- I did- I always see you! As in, you’re very noticeable, I just didn’t…”

He continued to ramble on some sort of desperate apology while other students sauntered away from the scene in both fear and interest. Suddenly Heather understood why people in medieval times would watch people be tortured and executed for fun, but she also knew that while she hated to disappoint a crowd, she also pitied the boy a little too much to give them what they wanted. Rather than doing her usual sneer or letting out a scheming cackle, she just continued to deadpan at him as she used one foot to begin to gather up his papers together. It took him a few more moments of blabbering on what might as well be a prayer to God asking for forgiveness until he realised what she was doing, as did the rest of the students watching. The hallway wasn’t silent, but the quietness was thick enough to feel like it was, as everyone stared in amazement as Heather fucking Chandler helped this unfortunate child get his shit together.

“Is that everything?” she asked in a slightly patronizing tone. Old habits never die, she supposed. Still, the sentiment was there and he noticed, his eyes wide with shock, almost like he was witnessing something paranormal.

“Um… yeah, I think so,” he said slowly. He likely didn’t believe he was hearing her right. “Th-thank you?”

“It’s whatever.” She shrugged, watching him grab hold of his notes messily before standing back up.

“Do you… need a napkin?” he asked, pointing to the big brown stain on her shirt, as well as the sticky liquid that was still on her chin and neck. She looked down at the noticeable stain - one no one could miss and that acted like proof that this interaction happened, and while it definitely stressed her out, there was no saving it with just a napkin.

“No, I’m good, thanks.” She glanced at Duke, who also seemed surprised by her coolness. “Bathroom?”

“Yeah, sounds good.” She nodded, and the two of them left the scene without another word. As she turned a corner, she heard chatter grow loud as students began to speculate what the ever-living fuck that was. She would have given an exasperated sigh, but she was distracted by a fellow senior walking past, eyeing the pair of them suspiciously. She was about to ask what the hell she was looking at, but she managed to speak first.

“Hey, Heather, you know you’re walking next to a transvestite, right?”

Heather immediately stopped, pulled off the lid of her drink and launched the half-empty cup in her direction. Brown liquid splashed everywhere, all over her clothes and some clinging to her hair. She yelped and looked at her in dismay, like she hadn’t expected this outcome at all, and the other witnesses in the hallway all stared at them as they shrunk away, not wanting to be in the crossfire.

“Do you know how _expensive_ this sweater was?” the girl barked at her. Heather shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter, because you should seriously ask for a refund, even if it was only a dollar. Oh, wait.” She smiled innocently. “Nevermind.”

The girl screeched in frustration, but challenged her no more, instead hurrying off, likely to try and fail to get the stains out of her clothes. Once she was out of sight, Heather turned to Duke and whispered,

“Transvestite is an insult, right?”

Duke just snorted. “Yeah. It means cross-dresser.”

“ _Oh._ ” Heather sighed in relief. “Okay, so I didn’t just ruin an innocent girl’s clothes.”

“No, don’t worry,” Duke laughed. “Thanks, by the way.”

Heather shrugged. “You don’t need to thank me - I did what I do best.”

They continued their journey to the bathroom, which thankfully only had one other girl in there finishing up (and did so much quicker upon seeing them) and Heather managed to get most of the slushie off of her seconds before the bell. She let out a long groan.

“Aw, your first lesson back not a fun one?” Duke teased. Heather continued to frown.

“English.”

“I thought you didn’t mind English.”

“Veronica’s in my class.”

Duke grimaced immediately. “Oh.” She glanced at her swatch. “Okay, so I predict, as she’s not here, that she’s at the back of the school with Emmy, so if you run, you can make it to the classroom before her. Then you can sit down at your desk without having to look at her.”

Heather smiled. “You’re a genius.” She left her tissue besides the sink and darted. “See you later, Heather!”

She’d already ran out the door before she could hear Duke’s response, and while she refused to run down the hallways like a panicking freshman, she definitely walked quicker than she usually would be seen doing in public. She knew it would lead to her being way too early for her class, but it didn’t matter. Bumping into Veronica is a thought she had been dreading all morning and before that, so it was worth absolutely killing her feet climbing all those steps in heels. It was strange walking up the stairs without Veronica there - lonesome, even - but she wasn’t willing to get sad about it before class had even begun.

She made it up all of the stairs, panting a little, and saw only a few other people in her class were standing outside of the classroom. Luckily, none of them were Veronica. She mentally patted herself on the back and hurried over to the door, and just as she was about to open it, one student spoke up.

“Oh, um, we can’t go in yet.”

She turned around and stared at him.

“What?”

He looked a little intimidated, but continued. “Wilson’s having a talk with someone in there - I think they cheated on a pop quiz or something. We have to wait outside.”

Heather looked through the window of the door and saw that she was indeed talking down to a guilty looking student, and so she groaned and rested her back against the wall right next to the door, tapping her foot against the floor impatiently. More students began to gather around the room, chattering amongst themselves and sparing her an occasional glance, emotions unreadable, until eventually, and of course inevitably, her eyes drifted to the staircase at the worst time. Coming up over the horizon was a familiar face, and even just the familiar figure would have made her tear her gaze away and avoid eye contact at all costs, but something made her stay. No, _everything_ made her stay. Veronica Sawyer, whom she hadn’t seen in about two weeks, couldn’t have looked more different. She had bangs now, which was the first thing she noticed, and while it was a surprise, it was… whatever, she changed her hair too, big deal, no matter how cute it looked on her. But what really caught her attention was her clothes. She wore mostly black and navy, no long the electric blue she had picked out for her. Her clothes were more loose, other than the black skinny jeans held up by an even darker belt, and was that an undercut? And was she looking at her too? Oh, she totally is, she should definitely look away and save one shred of her dignity, but she just…

 _Fuck you, Sawyer! I leave for two weeks and you somehow come back even_ hotter _than before?_ It sounded humourous in her head, but in real life it _hurt,_ because no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t say a word to her.

* * *

_Oh. Oh shit._

Veronica knew that the inevitable eye contact they would make with Chandler at some point would be… difficult, but they had trusted that they would know to look away as soon as it happened. But they couldn’t, because they were completely and utterly perplexed. Heather looked so different, and yet somehow the same, but so _different._ She knew it was mainly her hair - of course it was, how would they predict that she would even dare to cut an inch off, nevermind half of it. Her hairstyle looked more similar to their own, if only more wild and curly. It also meant it was too short to hold her scrunchie, and though it was such a small detail, it was jarring. Not that they hadn’t seen her without it before, but never in _school,_ and never because it simply couldn’t stay in her hair. And seeing a noticeable stain that she wasn’t desperately trying to hide wasn’t expected at all, nor was one of her hands being bandaged up. They were such tiny things, and yet they made such a difference that Veronica forgot to look away, and-

Oh, Heather’s looking at them too.

They hated that despite everything that had happened, seeing that blue gaze land on their own was so alluring that all they wanted to do was run up to her and kiss her, but they reminded themself that, no, Heather was not somebody they wanted to associate themself with right now. They reluctantly tore their gaze away and walked further away from her and kept their head down. That would have been that, had voices not began to stir up right after the silent interaction. They looked up and saw the other students glancing in both of their directions curiously, spectating and analysing a little too loudly for them to hear.

“So it’s true! They’re not talking!”

“See, bro, I _told_ you.”

“What do you think happened?”

“Does this mean Veronica isn’t a Heather anymore?”

“No, she still hangs out with the other two.”

“Do you think the whole group’s fallen apart?”

Irritation grew in Veronica after hearing each one, but they didn’t get a chance to speak up, since they heard Heather groan loudly, interrupting their discussions.

“Could you shut up about me and Veronica?” she snapped. “Yes, we’re not talking! Congrats for figuring that out! Now shut the fuck up, neither of us wanna hear it!”

That worked better than Veronica could have ever done it, and they were close to giving her a thankful look, but stopped themselves. Instead, they felt gratitude for Heather’s ability to control the students internally and held back the need to snicker.

"Your hair is different." They heard someone say, pointing to Heather, who rolled her eyes.

" _Is_ it? I didn't notice!" she exclaimed, voice thick with sarcasm. Again, Veronica pursed their lips to stop themselves from laughing.

"Alright, you can all come in now." The door opened and Mrs Wilson spoke, gesturing for them to go inside. She was about to walk back in when Heather caught her eye. "Oh. Welcome back, Heather," she said with uncertainty.

"Thanks, what did I miss?" Heather replied, being the first one to slip past her. Veronica kept their distance as they followed the rest of the class through, avoiding Heather's gaze on her way to their desk.

"Not much, other than a fair bit of studying," Mrs Wilson said as she sat down, eyeing Heather. "Maybe try to not get suspended for two weeks and you wouldn't be so behind."

Heather scoffed, leaning back in her seat. "I'm not behind." She leaned down and reached into her bag, pulling out a pile of notes that presumably covered everything they had learned while she'd been gone. Mrs Wilson's eyes widened as she looked at the notes, completely dumbfounded.

"Oh," she grunted. "Well, I'll look over them later to check everything's there."

"Unnecessary but sure."

Mrs Wilson's gaze grew thoughtful. "Who helped you with those, Veronica?"

Alert, Veronica's head snapped up. "No, I didn't," they quickly replied, making Wilson confused. Meanwhile, the rest of the class let out a low, suspenseful,

_"Ooooooooooh."_

Heather whipped her gaze around and glared at them all, silencing them quicker than any teacher could. Satisfied, she smiled cooly and looked to the front of the classroom again. Still puzzled, Mrs Wilson stood up and picked up a marker.

"So, um, anyway, today's lesson will be focusing on…"

As she began to ramble, Veronica's head kept on wandering back to Heather, as much as they hated to admit it. They hadn’t realised how empty this lesson had been without her, and now that she was back, she couldn’t even talk to her because they were supposed to be _mad._ And they _were_ mad, but they still missed her, and-

“ _Pssssst._ ”

Veronica flinched at a harsh voice coming from behind them. They turned around and saw a classmate leaning over their desk to whisper,

“Hey, what happened between you and Heather?” she asked. Veronica could only stare at her. They just didn’t quit, did they?

“That’s none of your business.”

They were about to turn back around, before,

“Is it because you’re trans?”

Veronica froze and snapped their gaze back to her.

“I’m sorry?”

“Because of what she said about transgender people. You know, before she was suspended. Is it because of that?”

“I-” Veronica’s jaw hung open, and before they could deny it profusely, Mrs Wilson interrupted.

“Veronica, Sara, pay attention please.”

Veronica spun back around but couldn’t bring their attention back to the lesson, not that it was there to begin with. All they could think about was the thought of people _knowing._ Maybe not knowing in the correct way, but knowing _something_ was up. They’d already changed their appearance enough, maybe people’s suspicions will grow from that? Or maybe one of their friends will refer to them as “he” a little too loudly and it’ll become the next topic of gossip for months.

 _It’s fine,_ they told themself. _I’ll find Heather later and talk to her. I’m sure she’ll know how to sort things out._

Perhaps they’d be less worried if they had a certain other Heather by her side to immediately shoot down the rumours without so much as a glimpse in her direction, but alas, that Heather was someone who they couldn’t bring themselves to talk to right now.  
  


* * *

Thank God that Heather’s desk was in front of Veronica’s and not behind, or she would have had a much worse start to her morning. Granted, her mind kept on wandering back to her, and she had absorbed absolutely nothing with her thoughts being so preoccupied, but she was keeping a positive attitude that it _could have been worse._

She was about three lessons in now; well, she was on her third lesson, but her third lesson was gym, so fuck that. It would have been easier to skip with Veronica’s help - she could have gotten her to forge a doctor’s note about her injured hand, but regardless, she had so far gotten away with walking around school with no one questioning why she wasn’t in class or didn’t have a hall pass. Probably because several other students were hovering around too, so she blended in well.

She figured that lunch was starting soon enough, so she might as well take the weight off of her shoulders and put her bag in her locker, so off she went to her respective corridor. She wasn’t oblivious to how people seemed to whisper to one another whenever she walked past - what about, she couldn’t be entirely sure, but she didn’t care to find out either no matter how curious. She was sure it would come back around to her eventually, and it was most likely about the events of this morning. Whether it be her being weirdly nice or defensive of Duke, take your pick.

“...And I don’t know, I just worry that people will find out.”

As she was about to turn the corner to where her locker would be, a familiar voice could be heard, making her pause. Of course she was bound to bump into Veronica again. She hid behind a corner and dared to peak around, and saw that she was with JD with a worrisome look on her face that made her heart tighten.

“It’s fine, Veronica, they’re accusing everyone,” JD said, patting her shoulder sympathetically. “I don’t think anyone’s suspicious, they’re just trying to come up with whatever rumours will keep them from going thirsty.”

Veronica sighed. “I guess you’re right. I’m just overthinking.”

“Nah, it’s an understandable worry. Take it from me.”

Veronica’s brow furrowed. “Do you worry about it too?”

“You mean, in general, or-”

“I mean, now. You know, after everything that happened.”

JD shrugged. “I suppose. But I always do, so it’s whatever. Besides, no one’s come and bothered me.”

Veronica nodded. “I’m glad.” She pulled him in for a hug. “Be safe, okay? I need to get back to class.”

“Honestly, Ron, I’ll be fine."

“I know, but still. You know I’m a worrier.”

“We all know this.”

“Fuck you.” She broke off the hug to lightly punch his arm.

“You said it, not me.”

“True.” She stepped away and gave a wave. “Alright, I gotta go. My politics class is doing abortion and I gotta be there to see Betty rip all the men to shreds.”

“I definitely won’t deprive you of that.” He waved back and watched her go, and oh, shit, she’s coming this way. She flinched backwards as to not reveal herself as having been listening in on their conversation. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to hide, so she was going to have to face her yet again, and that’s exactly what happened. Veronica turned the corner and flinched when their eyes locked for the briefest moment, before she lowered her head and hurried off at a quicker pace. It stung and she yearned to just see her even smile at her again, but she shook the thought off and continued her journey to her locker. She arrived just in time to see JD turn a corner on the other end of the corridor, which was a shame, she thought. She could have at least said hello, but no matter.

She shoved her bag into her locker and winced at the sight of the strip of photos of her and Veronica hanging on the inside. She didn’t have the heart to take it off, out of some crude hope that soon, all of this would go back to normal, and she most certainly didn’t have the heart to remove any pictures of her and Mac. Oh, God, she hadn’t even seen her today. She wondered how bad the aching of that would be?

Her thoughts were interrupted, however, by distant voices. These ones were also familiar, but weren’t ones she was happy to hear.

“Where’d you think you’re going, fag?”

She could already roll her eyes at the slurs being thrown not three seconds in, though she was still curious as to what was actually going down. She closed her locker lightly and began to follow the sounds of their voices, in the same direction JD had left.

“Yeah, don’t think you’re getting away that easy.” So, Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum were both in on it, she could hear. She sped up a little, rounded the corner and found herself facing a growing swarm of students who had also come to see what the ruckus was all about. It also meant Chandler couldn’t see what was going on, but that was easily fixable with a couple of shoves here and there. She’d made it past about two people before she heard a third voice.

“Could you leave me alone? I’m trying to mind my own business here.”

Her froze briefly upon hearing JD’s voice, but not long enough for people around her to notice. She instead kept moving until she was at the front of the crowd, and saw Kurt and Ram standing over JD with stupid, cocky smirks on their faces.

“So how does your boyfriend feel about your thing with Veronica, huh?” Ram taunted, shoving a hand into his forehead and forcing him to stumble backwards.

“Yeah. Does Veronica know?” Kurt added, and though he didn’t lay a hand on him, it created a ripple of laughter in the crowd from everyone apart from her. Mainly because she was watching him try and keep his usual unphased attitude, but it was faltering. Usually he’d be able to deadpan someone straight in the eye, not be keeping his head down.

“Even if that were true, she’d much prefer me over the likes of you two,” he grunted. The crowd chattered with intrigue, while Heather just snickered at the insult, mainly with how it wiped any smugness off of Ram’s face.

“Tough talk for someone who looks like a drowned rat,” Kurt retorted. JD rolled his eyes and looked like he was about to turn around to try and escape, but of course that didn’t work, as Heather could easily predict. Ram shoved his shoulder backwards to swing him back around and stepped closer to him.

“Don’t fly away just yet, fairy, we still didn’t catch your boyfriend’s name.”

JD snarled at him. “Are you using the same insult twice?”

"Just tell us and we won't ask again."

JD just scoffed and tried to turn around again, but of course it was no use, because Ram stepped in front of him and smirked. Looking up at him, JD deadpanned.

"Don't you have some girl you wanna go sexually harass instead?"

A low rumble from the crowd sounded from the insult, with some male voices merely laughing at the statement that made Heather's blood boil, but she remained quiet as she watched the smirk on Ram's face fall.

"No, 'cuz we're already harassing one," Kurt quipped. Of course it was an easy save for them two, but for JD, Heather saw the underlying alarm in his gaze. She doubted anyone else picked up on it, luckily.

"You're both hilarious," JD grunted.

"Is that why you haven't shown Veronica what's in your pants yet?" Ram laughed. "Because there's nothing down there to show?"

JD sneered at him. "Now you're just pulling shit out of your ass."

"Come ooooon, are you one of them or not? It would make sense if you were really a girl." Kurt cackled as he stepped forward and grabbed JD by the face. "Is that why you forgot to take your eyeliner off?"

Kurt got a fist to the face in response. Heather watched him stumble back, cradling his jaw and grimacing in pain, while JD stood there huffing angrily. He was so focused on watching Kurt, though, that he didn't see Ram mutter something under his breath before swinging his own fist at him. The crowd roared as it collided just above his eye, watching him stagger back with intrigue. They waited, with Heather knowing full well they were expecting a fight, and when JD looked up to glare at him and clenched his fists, the excitement around her grew. She could only watch as he stepped forward again, fully expecting him to be clogged, but surprisingly, he blocked both of the boys’ swings and managed to land a punch in Ram’s face and a kick to Kurt’s leg. Both the jocks were shaken for a brief moment, but returned for more, and soon kicks and punches and attempts to tackle became too quick for Heather to be able to follow, especially not with the loud cheering from the crowd who were finding way too much enjoyment out of this, chanting “holy shit!” every time JD managed to land a punch and, admittedly, if Heather had no connections with JD at all, she’d be in the very same boat.

But she wasn’t in the same boat, especially when she knew full well that half of those insults just thrown wouldn’t have been said at all if it weren’t for her. As she considered her options in watching the three boys fight, with JD somehow managing to avoid being hurt a lot more than the other pair despite being at an unfair advantage, that winning streak came to an end when JD got a little too distracted with diverging from a forceful swing from Ram to notice Kurt running at him from behind and barrelling into his side, knocking him off his feet. JD let out a loud grunt and didn’t immediately get back on his feet, which was already a bad sign. No, he stayed on the floor, struggling to hold himself up, while Kurt and Ram stood victoriously over him.

“Y’know, for a tranny, you got a lot of balls,” Ram jeered, about to swing a kick right to his face, before Heather, completely impulsively, darted forward, leaped over JD and shoved herself into Ram, causing him to stumble backwards. Not from force - Heather wasn’t anywhere near as strong as him - but from shock. The crowd went dead silent and Kurt and Ram stood still, staring at her in bewilderment. For a while she did the same, unsure where to really go from here.

“Heather?” Ram questioned. “You… look different.” He looked her up and down. “What are you-”

“Lay off him,” she cut in, staring him down dangerously, since looks and words were all she really had. Ram frowned.

“We will! Just after we win,” he laughed, holding a fist out to Kurt, who bumped it with his own knuckle. “Come on, move aside, we just wanted to teach this fag a lesson.”

“A lesson in _what?_ From what I can tell, you two started this.”

“Sure, but he shouldn’t have continued to be a dick?” Kurt retorted.

“So, you’re mad he retaliated at you bothering him? That’s typical,” she muttered.

“Come on, just let us finish this!” Ram groaned. “Since when does this shit bother you anyway? You _always_ watch us do this stuff, you find this _fun!_ ”

Hushed murmurs could be heard from the other students watching, and Heather sighed.

“Yeah, well, I’m drawing the line here.”

“Oh come on, just let us past!” Kurt whined, trying to step around her. Heather blocked his path, only for Ram to go the other way. She leaped in front of him and shoved him back, only for Kurt to try and slip past her again.

“I said, _piss off!_ ” she hissed, pushing both of them away at once. Both of them stared at her in dismay.

“But _Heather-_ ” Ram complained.

“You heard me,” she growled dangerously.

“You’re making a fool of us,” Ram then muttered, lowering his voice as he looked around the crowd. “Seriously, why are you defending this jerk?”

“She _was_ nice to a nerd this morning, apparently,” Kurt whispered to Ram, who eyed her suspiciously.

“Heather, we’re only doing what you said,” Ram pointed out. “You _did_ say to look further down the food chain for trannies, didn’t you?” He smirked as he looked at the floor behind her. “I think we found one.” 

Heather’s gut twisted with guilt, but she pushed it aside. “I never said to go look for them to beat the shit out of them.” She looked back to JD, and saw that he was conscious and watching the interaction intently, but still on the floor. “Also, you don’t know if he’s trans. You’re just jealous that someone like Veronica would be into him over the likes of either of you. I don’t think him being trans or not changes the fact that he isn’t a douche, something I can’t say about either of you.”

When the crowd actually found that humourous, Ram and Kurt could only give her an offended look.

“Well, he won’t even have his average looks going for him once I’m done with him-” Ram growled, marching forward. Heather stood her ground, hands landing on his chest to keep him back.

“I said _quit it,_ you asshole-” she tried to protest, but he was too strong and too determined to finish what he started. Whether he meant to or not, she wasn’t sure nor did she care, because he ended up knocking her off of her heels and onto the floor. Her elbow hit the cold surface and caused a jolt of pain to shoot through her arm, but at least she didn’t land on JD, who had known to move out of the way. As stunned students nervously muttered amongst themselves, Heather just slowly picked herself up, that is until JD spoke up,

“Jesus, are you alright?” Despite his weakened state, he slid over to her and held out a hand, which Heather found herself taking.

“I’m _fine,_ ” she grumbled, before snapping her head back up towards Ram, who for the first time, looked threatened. He hadn’t gone through with his plan to beat JD into the ground, so clearly her falling over knocked some sense into him. Too little too late, though, as she stood back up on her feet and snarled at him furiously. “ _That_ little sack of shit, however, is about to run home to mommy with tears running down his bruised fucking face-”

“Heather, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!” Ram protested, backing away from her. “I only meant to push you out the way!”

“Yeah? You did just that, jackass.” She clenched her fists and stalked closer to him. Kurt jumped in between them and shot Heather a pleading look.

“Heather, we don’t get it! Why are you defending him?”

“Yeah! What did we do wrong?”

“We only wanted to give him a good scare!”

“And why’s that?”

“Because Veronica seemed into him! And just _look_ at him.” He gestured to him, and Heather did indeed look at him. He’d gotten off of his feet at this point, wiping some blood dripping from his nose with the back of his hand. “She can do way better.”

“What’s ‘better’? You two? Because that’s called a downgrade, sweetie.”

_“Oh, shit!”_

_“They’re gonna fight!”_

_“Guy on girl fight?”_

Everyone at the centre of the circle could hear the other students talk, and honestly, looking at the two dirt stains in front of her, Heather was beginning to consider it, even though the only fights she had ever gotten into were with other girls and usually led to a week’s detention at least. But her adrenaline was pumping and her fists were already clenched, she considered even throwing the first punch in Kurt’s stupid face, but a hand behind her caught her own that was already craning backwards.

“Heather, don’t.”

A gentle tug away from the jocks, which Heather disgruntledly followed.

“Why not?” She turned to JD with a sneer. “They deserve it.”

“They do, and I’d love them to be pummeled silly,” JD agreed, “but, ah, your best hand is hurt. And even if it wasn’t, you couldn’t win. No offense.”

Heather had honestly forgotten she still had a deep gash in the middle of her palm. It was still gruesome looking, and she was sure if she put enough force on it, her hand would end up being coated in her own blood from re-opening the wound and would definitely hurt like hell. She inhaled, trying to cool herself off, and released her rage through an exhale, and slowly felt her rational thoughts return. She gave the hand holding hers a gentle squeeze as she did so, even if it was clammy, because it at least helped her train of thought stay on the right track.

What she hadn’t noticed, though, was the amount of eyes glued to that same hand being held. She didn’t notice until she realised how silent everyone had become, and looked around to see everyone, including Kurt and Ram, staring at her in disbelief.

“What?” she asked. “Why are you all-”

“You’re _serious?_ ” Kurt exclaimed, pointing to the interlocked hands. “There’s _no_ way!”

“ _That’s_ why you’re sticking up for him?” Ram honestly looked betrayed, and it took Heather a while to actually realise what they were talking about.

“Wait, what?” JD seemed to realise too and honestly looked even more panicked by the idea than being outed as trans. Wow, okay, fucking rude. Though, it did give her an idea. A very stupid one that she’d likely regret once this was over, but right now, it was perfect. “You don’t seriously think we’re-”

As he spoke, Heather felt his hand leave hers, only for her to quickly snatch it back and firmly grasp it, even if it stung a little on her bandaged wound.

“Okay, _fine,_ you got me,” Heather groaned. “I wasn’t planning to announce it publicly, but if it’ll make you two _fuck off…_ ” Realising that this likely wasn’t too convincing with just a simple (and accidental) hand hold, she decided to snake one arm across JD’s chest and rested her hand on his shoulder, leaning closer to him in the most possessive way she could muster. She could feel JD stiffen up and she knew she would have to apologise afterwards, but he would just have to trust her with this.

“B-but Heather! He’s a _loser!_ ” Ram whined, hobbling forward. “You can’t seriously be _dating_ him. What about what _we_ had?”

Heather rolled her eyes. “What about it? What we had was the equivalent of table scraps.” The crowd laughed, and she smirked. She was scared that she might have lost her touch upon returning to Westerburg, but clearly not.

“But you… you never even date anyone anyway, and now that you finally are, you pick _him?_ ”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“Yeah! Even if he isn’t trans, he might as well be! He’s wearing _makeup,_ Heather!”

Heather arched a brow. “Well, if he was, then maybe I’ll finally sleep with someone who knows what the fucking female anatomy looks like, _Ram,_ ” she jeered crudely. “Where did you think the clit was again?”

Ram’s jaw hung open, but no words left him. He didn’t have an answer, and so Kurt tried to help.

“Oh, come on, _no one_ knows where it is!”

 _Bullshit._ “Okay, where do _you_ think it is, Kurt?”

“Um…” Kurt stammered. “Isn’t it like… you know around the, uh, entrance?” He made a weird gesture, and Heather couldn’t hold back a cackle, and neither could several other students - generally girls - watching the scene play out.

“Then _where could it be?_ How do girls orgasm then?” Kurt protested. Oh, poor, poor Kurt. Should she ruin his image of a Sex God for him? Absolutely.

“Kurt, you’ve never made a woman orgasm in your life. They faked it. Every single one of them.” 

“Y-you don’t know that-!”

“Heather faked it, Kurt. She told me.”

Students laughed even more, while Kurt and Ram were honestly growing red from embarrassment.

“W-well at least our tastes didn’t downgrade to Bo Diddley here!” Ram pointed to JD, who Heather noticed was also snickering to himself. Heather just sighed, as if tired of Ram’s desperate attempts to save himself.

“Downgrade from _what,_ you?” She grinned deviously. “Ram, you’re more likely to get your skid marks off than me. And that’s saying a lot - they’ve been there for a _while._ ”

That seemed to be enough to silence the pair of them, with them both clamping their mouths shut as the student body collectively relished themselves in their humiliation, with Heather owning the hand that feeds. And strangely enough, it felt much better to feed them something that was only at the expense of two jackasses who she could care less about, and she was relieved that it had actually _worked._ She could watch Kurt and Ram flee the scene with glee, having lost the fight after all, while the students around them continued to laugh amongst themselves and leave in their respective groups, one by one. Once enough of them had left, Heather pulled JD away, off into a more deserted corner of the school. Once they were there, she finally let go of his hand, and slowly turned around to face him at last. She was met with those most pained look she had ever seen in his expression. Should she be offended?

“Okay, listen-”

“ _Dating?_ ” His voice got strangely high pitched, more than she had ever heard. She had always wondered what it would take to break his completely monotone display, and she was pretty sure she had just found it.

“It was all I could think of in the moment!” she whisper-hissed. JD’s eye twitched.

“You couldn’t have pretended you were just my friend?”

“No one cares about platonic relationships, they’re not as shocking.”

JD groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Okay, well, how do we _break up,_ then?”

“Break up?”

“Well, they’re gonna know you were lying if we start obviously _not_ acting like boyfriend and girlfriend and then get suspicious as to why - so we’re gonna have to break up in front of everyone, right?”

Heather grimaced. “Precisely.”

JD frowned at her. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I know how this school works, JD, if we break up immediately after announcing we’re together, they’re gonna come to that same conclusion.”

JD blinked at her. “So… what are you getting at?”

Heather clapped her hands together, took a deep breath and prepared herself for the answer she was about to give, because she was by no means happy about it either.

“Well… at least whenever we’re _together,_ we may have to…” She cleared her throat. “...Pretend to date.”

JD seemed to be searching for his words, only to find none at all. He pursed his lips and took a deep breath, and again, _should Heather be offended?_

“One question,” he eventually said.

“Yes?”

“ _Do we have to?_ ”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“To keep you safe, dumbass!” Heather exhaled calmly and lowered her voice. “Listen. I still don’t know how shaken up my reputation is here, but from what I can tell, people are still scared of me and I have a decent amount of control over the students, despite everything that happened. That means, if you’re associated with me as my partner, _no one will bother you._ ” Her gaze softened. “And I say partner because, well, Heather’s still getting shit thrown her way, even if she’s clearly still my friend. If you’re my boyfriend, however, I doubt anyone will fuck with you.” She sighed remorsefully. “It’s not ideal - I don’t wanna do it either. But it’s the least I can do.”

“The least you can do?”

“Ram was right about one thing.” She bit her lip. “Half of those insults wouldn’t have been thrown your way if it weren’t for me.”

JD’s gaze also softened. “You know I’ve been getting that shit thrown my way for years, right? It’s nothing new.”

“Don’t try and minimize my damage - you think Kurt and Ram knew what a trans person was until I pulled that bullshit two weeks ago?” She huffed sadly. “I obviously can’t fake date every trans person in the school to protect them, but… if it’ll protect you, then it means I saved at least one of you from my stupid actions.”

“Oh.” JD actually seemed… touched by her words. His eyes were glassy and flickering around a little more than usual. “Do you think it’ll work?”

“It did just then.” The corner of her mouth picked up. “You’re acting like I don’t know how this school works - it might as well be a formula you can write down.”

JD let out a long, defeated sigh. “Then… I guess we’re _dating._ ” He used heavy quotations for that word.

“Don’t act like dating me is a _bad_ thing!”

“I’ll try not to in public.”

“Fuck you. As if dating you will be any easier.” She crossed her arms and eyed him up and down. “In fact, have you ever dated anyone?”

“Rude,” JD grunted. “And yes. Once. It’s how I found out I’m aromantic.”

Heather’s brow furrowed. “You’re… scented?”

“No, I lack romantic attraction.” He placed a hand on his hip. “Basically I never want to date anyone. Ever. I am incapable of feeling romantic feelings, all I feel are all the other ones.”

“Other ones? What are the _other_ ones?” She blinked. “Also, _never?_ ”

“You know, sexual, sensual, emotional… all those are there. Dating just isn’t my thing. So good luck making us dating _believable,_ Heather.”

“Well _how was I supposed to know that!_ ”

JD snickered. “You weren’t, it’s fine.” A genuine smile formed on his lips. “And as much as I absolutely hate this, I do appreciate it.”

Heather felt herself relax, wondering if she’d ever seen him smile, other than as a side effect of laughing. “Oh. It’s… fine, really.” She shrugged. “In fact, it may be entertaining seeing all the popular boys get jealous over my, ahem, _choice_ of a _boyfriend._ ”

JD rolled his eyes, but by the snigger he let out, he saw the humour in it. Heather snickered too, before getting distracted by the blood stains smeared across his face that she had somehow gotten used to since they’d left the fight.

“First things first though, you need to get those patched up.” She pointed to his nose and the cut just above his eye, where Ram had punched. “No _boyfriend_ of mine is going to walk around school like that.”

“There’s no one around, you don’t need to call me that.”

“It’s good practice.” She looked at his trenchcoat. “Now, don’t suppose in the infinite worm holes you have in there, you have some bandaids, do you?”

“Why the fuck would I have bandaids on me?”

Nevermind the countless bizarre items he had seemingly pulled out of nowhere from that trenchcoat, Heather tutted to herself and grabbed him by the arm.

“Okay then, let’s go.”

“You’re not taking me to the nurse, are you?”

“And get you a paper towel? No, I have a first aid kit in my car.”

“...Why?”

“Emergencies.” She glimpsed at him. “And that’s what you are, so let’s go.”

JD sighed exasperatedly, but followed along anyway, and luckily for them, there were too few people around to have to hold one another’s hand.

Granted, Heather didn’t let go of his sleeve at any point right up until they were at her car, but that was more due to the irrational fear that he would disappear as soon as he was out of sight, declaring that fuck it, who needs bandaids, we bleed out like men. Did that mean she genuinely cared about his wellbeing? Perhaps, but that’s what you get when you steal the tapes that recorded a PTSD flashback you had in front of your whole school and hand them over for you to burn.

And now, this was the strangest, and definitely most _difficult_ way of saying thank you.

* * *

“So I didn’t get a chance to ask - how’s day one of Heather returning been so far?”

Veronica looked up at Betty as they made their way to the lunch table after their Politics class. They thought they’d be met with a mischievous look after being told a joke in poor taste, but that’s not what they saw. She looked genuinely interested, and Veronica realised it was a legitimate question.

“Um… weird,” they replied. “I don’t know how to act around her.”

“Completely fair,” she said. “Did she try and talk to you?”

“No,” they said. “But it did make the other students curious as to why we’re not talking, so she told them to shut up. I did appreciate that a lot.”

“Oh, that’s good.”

Veronica bit her lip. “She looks different.”

“Mhmm?”

“Her hair’s shorter.”

“Oh.” Betty hummed thoughtfully. “Everyone gets bored when they’re alone for two weeks.”

They stood in line for their lunch, having arrived earlier than most and therefore being one of the first to get their food, and were soon sat down. They were the first people at their table, and soon enough, Martha arrived, followed by Mara. No Duke or JD though.

“Hi, sweetie,” Mara chipped as she sat down. Veronica smiled at her.

“Hey.”

Mara nervously twirled her hair. “Have you seen Heather today?” she whispered. Veronica nodded.

“I had a class with her first thing.”

“Oh.” She winced. “How did it go?”

Veronica shrugged. “Dunno. We kinda avoided each other.”

“Oh,” she grunted sadly. “Did she seem okay?”

“I suppose. She seemed like her usual self.”

“That’s good?”

“Yeah.” Veronica bit the inside of their cheek as they swirled their pasta on their fork. “I guess so.”

Across the table, they heard Martha and Betty having their own discussion amongst themselves, a bit of which they heard.

“Should we tell them?” Martha asked.

“I don’t know,” Betty said with a grimace. “I kinda wanna wait to see how things go, first? Actions speak louder than words and all.”

“That’s fair.”

“What’s fair?” Veronica asked. Both Martha and Betty jerked their heads back to them, having not realised they could hear them.

“Nothing,” Betty quickly said. Veronica was skeptical, but decided to drop it. Instead, they turned back to Mara.

“Do you know where Heather is?”

“You mean, Dewdrop?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh… I spoke to her before, she’s um… sitting with Heather today.”

“Oh.” Veronica’s shoulders slumped with disappointment, but Mara leaned closer to them and whispered,

“In fairness, she told me she’s had trouble eating in front of, um, new people?”

“Okay, that’s completely fair,” Veronica said with a shrug. “So long as she isn’t abandoning us, I suppose.”

“She isn’t, I promise!”

“I know.”

Just as their conversation finished, the final member of their table sat down next to Martha, only he seemed… slightly off. JD was usually completely unreadable and Veronica expected him to be just the same now, as he had been before, but instead of his cool gaze drifting back and forth between the two sides of the table, he instead seemed to be looking around the whole cafeteria, his eyes slightly wider than usual as if alert. And above his eye was something that hadn’t been there less than an hour ago too.

“JD! What happened?” Veronica exclaimed, gesturing to their own eye. “Why do you have a bandaid?”

JD whipped his head back at them and grimaced.

“Oh… just got into a bit of, uh, trouble with two certain dickheads.”

“Trouble?” they echoed.

“Let me guess - Kurt and Ram?” Mara guessed. “What happened?”

“Yeah, are you alright?” Martha asked. Betty’s expression turned dangerous.

“Do I need to pop some balls with a needle?”

“Ew.”

“Gross.”

“Like a fucking balloon, Betty?” Veronica shot her an odd look. “Do you know how balls work?”

Betty slowly turned to face them with a disconcerted expression, and it took Veronica a moment.

“...Oh yeah.”

Rolling her eyes, Betty turned back to JD.

“Seriously, though, are you okay?”

JD gave a small nod, along with an uncharacteristic squeak, “Mhmm.”

Everyone on the table exchanged a confused and somewhat concerned glance.

“Mhmm?” Betty prompted. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, um, you’re acting really off,” Martha said.

“Even I can see that,” Mara pointed out. JD pursed his lips and nodded.

“Yep. Everything’s… _covered,_ as you could put it.”

“Covered?” Veronica questioned. As they did, some voice of a guy off in the distance, somewhere behind them, yelled,

_“Lucky bastard!”_

Veronica wasn’t sure if it was aimed at any of them, that is until JD winced and shrank into his seat, or as best as one could sink into a spineless bench, anyway. Veronica frowned at him.

“What was that all about?”

“Um…”

“What the _fuck!_ ” They were interrupted by Mara exclaiming. “Heather’s hair - it’s _gone!_ ” She grabbed her own hair as she stared across the cafeteria, as if scared that her own hair would fall to the same fate. Veronica followed her gaze and saw that Chandler was indeed on the other side of the cafeteria, clipboard in hand and standing beside Duke. Mara looked back to her, panicked. “Where did it go?”

“Some of it’s still there,” Veronica joked dryly,

“You know what I mean! Why would she cut her hair?”

Veronica shrugged. “Dunno - Betty said people get bored when they’re alone for two weeks.”

Mara looked unconvinced. “Heather would never cut her hair out of _boredom._ She loves her hair!” She shot them a worried look. “What if something happened?”

Veronica shrugged again. “I have no idea, sweetie” Though, it did get them thinking - what if something _did_ happen to cause the change in appearance? They weren’t sure what could have sliced half of her hair off, but the worry was still there.

Mara bit her lip worrisomely. “I’ll ask Heather. Maybe she knows.”

Veronica sighed. “If you’re really that worried, you can go and ask her yourself.”

Mara frowned at her. “No, I’m trying to be a good person and not talk to her until… um… something? What am I even waiting for?”

“I dunno, for her to be a better person?” Veronica rested her cheek in her palm. “So I have no idea how long that’ll take.”

Mara sighed dejectedly. “Me neither.”

They turned back around and were content with just finishing their lunch, but no, apparently today allowed for no one to take a fucking break, because almost immediately after they turned around, two boys with a hefty build - probably part of some sort of sports team - slammed their hands down on either side of JD, who looked legitimately startled. Again, that was very unlike him - he was usually able to keep a straight face during any sort of conflict.

“Um, excuse me?” Betty spoke up, glaring at them both. “What are you both-”

“You think you’re tough stuff, new kid?” The boy on the left questioned, too busy glowering at JD to even acknowledge Betty.

“I’m not even new anymore,” JD grumbled.

“Yeah, you think you can just waltz in here and grab a snatch like that?” the boy on the right interrogated with a sneer. “I mean, just look at you.” He shoved his head roughly.

“Yeah, what the hell does she see in you? What do you have that we don’t?”

While everyone was concerned about JD’s wellbeing, they were even more confused as to what in the flying fuck they were talking about. Everyone again shared a dumbfounded look with one another, and were about to question what looked like an incredibly embarrassed and flushed JD even further, when-

“Um, what do you two douchebags think you’re doing?”

While the sound of Chandler’s voice made Veronica’s heart twist with anguish, they had to admit, they were a lot more interested in what the hell she was doing, walking over to them. Everyone had the same thought and looked over to her, seeing her strutting towards the table with a fierce glare on her expression. She briefly looked in Veronica and Mara’s direction, her expression faltering for half a second, before returning back into character. The two boys had stopped looking so intimidating, having taken a step back from JD at this point, one of them even having his hands in the air.

“N-nothing, Heather!”

As Heather finally made it to the table, Veronica saw that Duke had been following her from behind, looking as though she was holding in laughter.

Chandler didn’t acknowledge the boy’s response, instead she gestured for Martha and Betty to shuffle further up the bench, which they did, albeit slightly confused. It irritated Veronica a little how she thought she could order them around after everything she’d done, but now wasn’t the time to call her out on it because she’d fucking _wrapped her arms around JD’s neck and sat down on his lap._ Veronica stared at them in amazement as Heather gazed into JD’s eyes with warm admiration, a look she had only ever seen directed at them, or Mara or Duke, one hand in his hair and stroking it as she asked,

“Are these boys bothering you, babe?”

 _I’m sorry, WHAT?_ Veronica’s mouth hung open as they stared back at JD, expecting - no, _praying_ for him to declare her insane and throw her off, but instead they watched as a very flushed JD, cheeks darker than they had ever seen them, stared back at her and nodded.

“Y-yeah, actually. They are.”

Chandler clicked her tongue and shook her head, standing back up and placing a hand on a jerked out hip.

“Is this true?” she questioned, and when they opened their mouths to deny it, she silenced them with a sharp hand gesture. “Nevermind, don’t answer. Instead, how about you think about the fact that my _boyfriend_ here-” she stalked towards them slowly, the menacing look on her face growing more deadly as she got closer, “-can easily pick your pitiful little faces out in a crowd to me? Do you think I’ll take a couple of jerks like you harassing him lightly?” She batted her lashes in a dangerously attractive way that almost gave Veronica a sense of nostalgia.

“N-no…” one of them stuttered. Heather chuckled darkly.

“No, I won’t.” She smirked. “So if you know what’s good for you, I suggest you run whilst you still can.”

Both of them nodded frantically, and just before they left, Chandler added,

“And make sure any other boys thinking of pulling the same shit know that too.”

“Yes, Heather.”

“Sorry, Heather.”

With that, they both scurried off, tails between their legs, and Heather watched them go with a proud smirk. She then raked her gaze across whatever students were behind Veronica and snarled,

“What are you all looking at? Turn your asses back around.” She made a twirling motion with her finger, and Veronica looked behind them just in time to see several neighbouring tables jerking their heads away from them, leaving not a single pair of eyes looking in their direction. Veronica turned back to their own table, eyes landing on Betty’s first, and sure enough, Betty looked as astounded as they did. Martha looked shocked too, while Mara honestly looked kind of scared - perhaps she thought she’d descended into madness and that this was all an illusion. Veronica could hardly blame her.

“Hey, um, quick question,” Betty asked, raising her hand. “What in the holy hell just happened? Am I having a stroke?”

Neither JD or Chandler answered her. Instead, JD, who was still very flushed, whipped his head around to Heather.

“” _I won’t get harassed,''_ you said.”

Heather grimaced, making a so-and-so motion with her hand. “Eh, jealousy is kind of a given when it comes to dating me. I thought you expected that.”

“No!”

“ _Please answer my question, I am begging someone, anyone to answer my question,_ ” Betty pleaded desperately.

It was Duke who ended up replying, that is, right after she burst out with laughter, hiding her face behind the clipboard she was holding.

“Chill, she- she’s not actually dating him,” she wheezed. “She’s doing it to keep people off his back.”

“Oh my God I thought I lost the goddamn plot.” Betty let out a sigh of relief, before looking back to JD. “So, wait, is that what you meant when you said that everything’s _covered?_ ”

JD shot her a disgruntled look. “It wasn’t my idea. Never in a _million years_ would it be my idea.”

“Was it really _that_ bad?” Chandler cooed sweetly.

“Was the lap thing _really_ necessary?”

“No, but you have to admit, it’s convincing.”

“Okay, so you’re fake-dating?” Martha asked. “That makes a lot more sense.”

“Did I give you all a scare?” Chandler asked.

“ _Yes,_ ” Betty and Martha both replied, and while Veronica and Mara stayed silent, Veronica knew that if they were talking to her, they would have said the exact same thing.

“That’s good, then no one will suspect a thing,” she said with a grin.

“Heather, I think you’re enjoying this a _little_ bit too much,” JD pointed out. Chandler shrugged innocently.

“I like fucking with people’s heads, and this is the perfect way to do it.” She seemed to get distracted with activity around the cafeteria, before leaning down and draping her arms around his neck. He squeaked in surprise, stiffening up. “Well, I’ll see you later, sweetpea.” She rested her chin on his shoulder briefly, then spoke again. “When was the last time you washed your trenchcoat?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

Her nose scrunched up, and she backed away. “Okay, lunchtime poll, Heather, let’s go.”

“Mhmm.” Duke still looked like she was holding in laughter as she followed her, their hands briefly touching as Chandler gestured for her to follow from behind and Duke reaching out towards her. “Right behind you.”

The group watched them depart, and as soon as they were out of earshot, they all looked at each other with the most baffled expression.

“Do we have time to unpack all of that?” Veronica asked. JD glanced at his watch.

“We have about an hour.”

“Yeah, that’s not enough time.”

“No…” Betty slowly said. “ _Fake dating?_ ” She whipped her head back towards him, and he could only sheepishly stare at his lap.

“Can we talk about how Heather cannot _stand_ you and yet… she’s doing _this_ to _protect_ you?” Mara questioned.

“Nope. That’s classified,” JD said.

“Is not! Since when did she give a shit about you?” Veronica exclaimed. “She would always fucking groan at the mere _mention_ of you, and now she’s… willing to pull _that?_ ”

“More like she’s willing to pull _him,_ ” Betty quipped. JD glared at her.

“She’s not _really_ dating me, Betty!”

“Dunno, she was _very_ convincing,” she teased.

“She has to be! Kurt and Ram accused me of being trans, so she defended me and told everyone we were dating so that people wouldn’t bother me, okay? It’s a stupid plan, but it’s all she had in the moment.” He sighed. “And… it’s kind of worked so far.”

“Wait, people are accusing you?” Veronica frowned. “But just before you told me-”

“I lied, Veronica! Of course people are suspicious of me. They already accuse me of being gay, why not throw being trans in the mix, too? I’m an easy target for that type of shit.” He averted his gaze. “I just didn’t want you to worry.”

Veronica blinked at him, a little stunned, before standing up and walking around the table to sit by his side. They placed a hand on his shoulder and offered a smile.

“Hey, we’re all in this together, okay?” they murmured. “You don’t need to pretend to not be hurt.”

“I know,” he said quietly. Veronica sighed.

“And I’m allowed to worry about you. Hell, if _Heather Chandler’s_ worried about your wellbeing to the point where she’s willing to _fake date_ you, we’re allowed to worry about you too.”

“Veronica’s right,” Martha said. “You can always come to us if you’re hurt.”

“Also, please, never give me a heart attack like that again,” Betty added.

JD gave a light chuckle. “I will. Come to you if I’m hurt, I mean. Though…” He looked over to Chandler, who was busy asking a table some questions. “I don’t think I’ll need it.”

Veronica sighed wistfully. No matter their feelings towards Chandler… they could be grateful for this. No matter how bizarre it was.

Perhaps, in fact, they’d been wrong. Maybe it wasn’t just her hair that was different.

They would wait and see, they decided.

_And hope, of course._


	2. Day Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tensions rise, and it's not between who you'd think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: discussion of rape, corrective rape, sexual assault, body shaming and trauma, transphobia, ED mentions

“So, let me get this straight, you and JD have been  _ friends _ this whole time?”

Heather rolled her eyes. “Not the whole time. Maybe for about a week at most,” she replied, still focused on wiping the makeup off of her face while Duke busied herself with getting changed. Was part of her tempted to steal a glimpse of her in that state? Perhaps, but she would never actually be so much of a creep to do so. “But I suppose now’s a good time to tell you that he was the one who gave me the tapes.”

“The tapes?  _ Oh, _ the tapes.” Duke hummed in realisation. “How the hell did he manage that?”

“He turned the power off and stole them when no one was looking, apparently.”

Duke gasped. “ _ He _ turned off the power?”

“Yeah.” She dropped her near-black makeup wipe and moved onto the next. “I felt like I owed him, to be honest.”

“Well, me too.”

“Heather, you’ve already done loads for every trans person in the school. I imagine he doesn’t expect anything more from you.” She finished off with wiping her lipstick off and gathered all the makeup wipes together to throw them into the trash can at the side of Duke’s bed.

“I suppose so. I’m dressed now, by the way.”   


Heather finally looked over to her, seeing her fully clothed in her PJs, and seconds after she spoke, a knock came on the door, making them both jolt. Heather quickly prepared to dart to a hiding place - most likely the closet, but when the door didn’t immediately open, she stayed in place.

“Yeah? Don’t come in, I’m getting changed,” Duke lied.

“I’m not - just here to say goodnight.” The sound of her mother sounded from the other side of the door.

“Oh. Night,” she replied, before the footsteps in the hallway faded for good. She sighed in relief, and so did Heather, who slumped back against the bed.

“Your parents say goodnight to you? What a concept.”

“Sometimes they do. If I haven’t put them in a bad mood,” she said. “And Hunter got on their nerves earlier today so I imagine they just wanted to show a little more care to me instead of him.” She climbed onto the bed and huddled under the duvet. “So - first day back. Did it go as smoothly as you hoped?” She lay on her side, cheek resting in the palm being held up by her elbow, facing her with intrigue. Heather decided to mimic her and slide under the duvet as well so she could lie down with her, rather than looking down at her.

“It went… weirdly,” she replied. “I don’t think I could have predicted the whole JD thing.”

“Wasn’t it your idea?”

“More like an impulsive decision that I now have to keep going.”

“For how long, exactly?” Duke snickered.

“Um…” Heather grimaced. “A while. You know, to keep it believable.”

Duke just laughed. “Well, enjoy showing all the PDA you can manage without wanting to vomit.”

Heather rolled her eyes, giving her a light shove to deter her from laughing more. “Chill, we don’t have to do  _ that _ much. Maybe just hold hands a few times, or-”

“Or straddle him in front of the whole cafeteria?”

“I didn’t  _ straddle _ him. Plus, that  _ worked. _ ”

“No kidding. By the end of the day  _ everyone _ was talking about it.”

“Good. Then everyone knows not to fuck with him.”

“I can’t argue with that. As hilarious as it is, it was also pretty ingenious. It’s a good thing your reputation has stayed the same, or maybe it wouldn’t have worked.”

“I’m assuming it’s stayed the same, but I don’t feel like I’m in the clear. It’s only been one day.”

“Don’t worry about it too much.” Duke rested her head on her pillow, her eyes drooping ever so slightly. “I came out as a trans woman and there are people who still step out of my way in hallways. You acting a little off on stage won’t do shit.”   


“Let’s hope not,” Heather mumbled, also letting her head sink into her pillow.

“You’ll be fine.” Duke turned over to turn her light off, leaving them in near-darkness. Heather could still see her eyes and her face, vaguely, but only because they were so close. And soon after the lights were out, Duke closed her eyes and let her breathing slow. Heather would have followed through, but she still wasn’t entirely convinced that everything was perfectly okay at school. Had her first day gone better than she expected? Yes, all things considered. But she still felt uneasy, and she was sure even if today had gone perfectly, she’d still be nervous about the next day now that unpredictability had entered her life.

Not only did she have her reputation to worry about, but she had her  _ morals _ to worry about too. She knew she hadn’t been the nicest today, she hadn’t planned to. But now, with the lights out and the room silent, her head began to race with the thoughts of her not doing enough to truly redeem herself. Sure, she’d saved JD from getting his ass beaten up anymore than it already had been, and now she was essentially his shield for the next few weeks at the very least, but was it enough? She hadn’t interacted with Betty or Martha much today. They’d been nice enough, even friendly, but she wondered if that really meant all that much. She knew Martha had forgiven her already, but was Betty even considering it yet? Surely she was after taking up JD as a fake boyfriend - she was pretty sure she knew that was a big deal for her. But what if she wasn’t? What if she wasn’t doing enough?  _ Am I redeemable at all? _

Her mind moved to her apology, replaying it in her head as she tried to work out what else she needed to do. Fuck, being a better person was hard, especially when so much of her cruelness was her own shield to cover up how messed up she was. She ended up not figuring anything out, but instead remembered something she had mentioned to Betty and Martha, something she still needed to do.

“What’s wrong?”

Though it was a mere whisper, Duke’s voice made her flinch. She looked back to her and was met with open eyes again.

“What do you mean?"

“You’re staring off into the distance,” Duke said. “Are you overthinking things?”

Heather snorted. “What makes you think that?”

Duke arched a brow, making Heather’s lip curl upwards for a moment, before she frowned again.

“I’m fine, don’t worry. Like I said, I overthink things at night.”

Duke sighed. “Alright then.”

Just as she was about to close her eyes again, Heather realised that she should probably speak up now.

“Um-”

That was enough to get Duke’s attention.

“I just… I was thinking, just then,” she stammered. “When I was apologising to Martha and Betty - Martha in particular - I was talking about how I shouldn’t have made fun of her weight and all, and it just made me realise…” She bit her lip, avoiding her gaze. “I should apologise to you too.”

“To me?”

“Because… if I’m making fun of people for being overweight, then I’m just gonna end up making you feel insecure about being that, whether you are or not.” She swallowed. “I don’t know, I just worry it contributed to, um… you know.”

She looked back up and saw she was fully awake again, gazing at her sincerely.

“Oh.” She blinked. “Um… I didn’t even think of that.”   


“You didn’t?”

“No.” She slowly brushed some hair from her face. “In that case, then I should probably apologise to myself,” she said humorously. “You weren’t the only one who body shamed people, you know.”

“Yeah, but I was the ringleader.”

“True, but it’s something everyone in high school does.” She shrugged. “It’s fine, Heather, I don’t-”   


“It’s not fine. I still hurt you.” She stared at her seriously. “I don’t care if it’s something everyone does - I always knew it was wrong. Everyone does. But I still did it, so… this is me apologising.” Duke opened her mouth to protest, only to be hushed by Heather. “Don’t defend me, I’m trying to reverse any damage I did to you.”

She lowered her hand and Duke’s mouth came in view again, and for a few long moments, she didn’t respond.

“Okay,” she eventually murmured. “Thank you.”

“It’s okay,” Heather replied. “And I told Martha she was beautiful, so I should tell you the same thing too.”   


Duke raised a brow. “Well, I hope you’d be attracted to me, considering you have a huge crush on me.”

Heather scowled. “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s not  _ hu- _ ”

She was cut off by a hand gripping the frame of her face firmly, yet not enough to hurt. Just enough to hold her head in place as Duke gazed into her eyes less than an inch apart from her. Heather’s words got caught in her throat as she felt blood rush to her face, which she was sure Duke couldn’t see in the dark, thank God. Still, she held a smug grin, and Heather just slapped her hand away and flipped her off.

“I could get used to this,” Duke snickered. Heather raised a brow.

“What, taunting me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a power-hungry bitch, you know that?”

“I learned from the best.” She smirked, and Heather just scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, well, in spite of that,” Heather said, “if I’ve ever done anything else to hurt you… let me know.”

Duke huffed. “I mean, sure. If I think of anything.”

Heather smiled, before letting her eyes close, ready to let herself drift off, only to be alerted a few minutes later.

“Actually,” Duke spoke up, her voice growing timid. “I think there is something.”   


“That didn’t take you long,” Heather sighed. “What is it?”

“Um…” Duke swallowed, biting the insides of her cheeks. “I don’t really blame you for it, so don’t… don’t feel too guilty. I’d just like it if you would avoid calling me things like… a prude, and things.”

That came as a surprise to Heather - she never thought such a flimsy insult could hurt her in any way.

“I can do that,” she said. “I didn’t think it bothered you beyond minor annoyance.”

Duke worried her lip, eyes flickering around nervously. “You know when I wrote those notes for you, for your speech? About the asexual experience.” She gripped the duvet tighter. “That… that was  _ me. _ I wrote about me.”

Heather took a moment to take that in. “You? As in, you’re… asexual?”

“Yeah.” She huffed into the pillow. “What, is it not obvious?”

“I…” Duke seemed to notice her uncertainty on how to reply, and just laughed, though it was somewhat bitter.

“I only found out recently, and even now I’m still not sure I have all the answers,” she continued. “I always thought I was just prudish or overly-nervous, I never understood why everyone wanted to have sex so badly.” Her finger traced circles on her pillow. “I thought at first that it was because I was a lesbian, when I started dating Emmy. But even  _ then _ the thought made me nervous, and…” She sighed. “I thought I was broken in some way.”

“So… you don’t like sex?”

“I do, just not in the same way,” she said. “I don’t feel sexual attraction, so it makes sex difficult, and even now that I have a label for myself, I just… it still feels like there’s something wrong with me, even though V and Emmy will tell me that there isn’t.”

“Well, they’re right. There isn’t,” Heather said with a shrug. “I didn’t think it was possible for someone to not be sexually attracted to anyone, but what do I know?” She raised a brow. “So, wait, are you attracted to girls, or-”

“In different ways, yeah. They’re pretty and I like looking at them. And again, I don’t mind sex with them either, it’s just a little more complicated.”

Heather was reminded of when JD had stated the existence of more than one type of attraction. “I see. Looks like we’re opposites - I figured out I’m pansexual.”

“Pansexual?”

“I’m attracted to anyone regardless of their gender.”

Duke snorted. “Yeah, sounds about right.” Her smile faded. “But, yeah, um… just don’t… don’t make fun of me for being weird about sex, okay? I just… I already struggle with the idea that I’m broken in some way.”

The bluntness made Heather’s heart clench as she replayed all those times that she off-handedly poked fun at Duke for being a “late-bloomer”, if you will. She hadn’t known any better, she hadn’t even realised it was possible to not want sex, or to not find anyone sexually attractive, but even then…

“I should have… I should have never pressured you, Heather,” she murmured, her voice a near-whimper. “God, I’m so sorry, I-”

“You didn’t pressure me,” Duke cut in, but Heather just stared at her seriously.

“But… but when we were younger, especially, I would always tell you to try it and to keep doing it to get guys’ attention and even got mad when you said you didn’t-”

“Okay, okay, and I slut-shamed you. We’re both at fault.” She rolled her eyes. “I know what you said, Heather, and it was no different to what everyone else was saying.”

“But-” Heather’s throat ached the deeper she thought about it. “But I should have never made you feel  _ obliged _ to have sex, I- I shouldn’t have-” She covered her mouth when she heard her voice crack. “I thought I was helping you be popular but all I was doing was putting you in situations that you never wanted to be in-”

“Heather! I would have done it anyway, I was always desperate to copy you, I tried having sex on my  _ own _ accord. It’s not your fault.”

“But I still did it.”

“You were young and so was I. I don’t wanna hold any of that against you. So we were told at a young age to lose our virginities as soon as possible, how is it either of our faults that we ended up in less than ideal situations?” She curled in on herself uncomfortably. “I don’t blame you, Heather. I know you never wanted me to do anything I didn’t want to do - you just wanted me to try and enjoy the things we were told we had to do. Were you right to do that? No, but you were, what, fifteen? I don’t care. I’d say I forgive you, but I was never mad at  _ you. _ ” She looked up at her with glassy eyes and saw sadness in her gaze, and so a hand cupped her cheek gently. It was then Heather realised she needed to sniff, which was a little embarrassing, but she did so anyway. “It isn’t your fault we both thought that was something we had to do.”

“No…” Heather worried her lip. “It isn’t.”

Duke’s hand left her cheek and instead rolled up in front of her mouth, hiding it. After an uncharacteristic silence from her, Heather spoke up again.

“It’s not a bad thing to not like sex,” she said. “You’re not broken, you know.”

Duke stayed quiet, her eyes flickering back and forth as if lost in thought, and the longer they did so, the more water built up around the rims.

“One time, um…” She spoke up, only to go quiet again. “No, no I don’t have to talk about that around you.”   


“About what?” She shuffled a little closer.

“Just… boys being… dicks."

Heather hesitated, but decided to stay and listen. “You can tell me. I’ll be okay.”

Duke gave a thankful half-smile that lasted half a second. “One time, not that long ago, either; all of you were there, Veronica, Emmy, and you. We were at a party, and some guy came up to me and I agreed to sleep with him.” She shifted uncomfortably. “But when we got up there, he got insistent about doing penetration. I obviously couldn’t, even if I wanted to, so I said no. But he kept insisting, and I kept saying no, but he wouldn’t drop it. Eventually, he told me he was trying to win a bet that some guys had made.”

“A… bet?”

“It… it became common knowledge I haven’t let anyone do it. So guys thought it would be a fun idea to see who could do it first - see who could  _ break _ me, if you will. Like I just needed a guy to shove their dick in me and suddenly I’d be into it.” Her lip quivered a little. “I told him then and there that that was gross and that I was leaving, but he wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t escape.”

Heather stared at her in horror. “How… how did you get out of it?”   


“I… I told him okay, but said I wanted to give him a warm up first. So I did oral, and once he came, I kept it in my mouth and spat it all over him and made a break for it while he was distracted.” She laughed sadly. “Good move, right?”

“You… still had sex with him,” she murmured ruefully. Duke’s mouth twitched and she nodded.

“I blamed myself,” she confessed. “Sure, I couldn’t do it anyway because of my goddamn biology, but say if I were like you, I still would have said no, and I just thought… why can’t I just enjoy it like everyone else? I’d been asking myself the same question for  _ years. _ Surely there was something wrong with me.”

“Heather-”

“I know, _it’s not my fault,_ _I shouldn’t have to say yes_ and whatever, I know, it just makes me mad that so many people… _want_ to say yes and _can_ say yes. Even you - you’ve said yes and wanted to before, haven’t you?”

Heather nodded, and the more she thought about it, she felt for Duke. She’d never truly considered what it must be like for her - or Mac, for that matter - to find yourself having sex with people you weren’t attracted to, hoping that maybe,  _ just maybe, _ this one might be it. This one will break down my walls.

And hearing what she had just heard, with it getting so far as people seeing you as some sort of game, some sort of prize to win, to  _ boast _ about and say, “It was me - I broke down her walls,” was horrific and disgusting and made Heather’s stomach churn.

“I’m sorry, Heather,” she murmured. Duke blinked at her slowly. There were tears pooling around her eyes, but she seemed calm.

“Why are you apologizing?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, “I guess I just know how it feels. At least, some of that.”

“Mmm…” Duke swallowed. “It’s why I’m telling you. I figured you’d understand.” She winced at her own words. “Does that sound awful?”

“No,” Heather sighed, her hand hunting for Duke’s that had disappeared under the covers at some point, and once she found it, she held it tightly and refused to let go. “I’m glad- wait, no, I’m not glad…” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I just mean, I’m glad I have someone to talk to who gets how it feels, just letting someone do whatever to you because you feel like you have no say in it, but then you blame yourself for letting it happen and it’s just an awful, painful cycle, and-” she hesitated, “I’m not saying I’m  _ glad _ you got to experience that, because I’m not, I’m just- Heather are you  _ laughing? _ ”

Though her cheeks had wet trails left from tears, Heather could see Duke’s shoulders bouncing ever so slightly, with her lips pursed tightly as she struggled to hold in her snickers.

“I get it, Heather, you’re sad I was raped,” Duke said with a snort. “You don’t need to clarify that.”

“I  _ know, _ I’m just saying that even though I’m comforted by you being able to empathise with me, I still wish you weren’t able to.”

“This is such a lovely moment,” Duke sighed wistfully, her hand tightening around hers. “Most girls will talk about their cute boy crushes at sleepovers. We’re different - you squat at my house to escape your abusive parents and we talk about boys violating us.”

“ _ Heather Lee Duke, _ are you seriously joking about this incredibly traumatic experience we’ve both gone through?” she scolded.

“Yes, and you are at least somewhat amused.” She pointed to her expression, which in fairness, Heather hadn’t noticed was humoured in any way. She knew Duke liked to joke about dark subjects, but she didn’t think she’d ever go  _ that _ far. Then again, she’d laughed in the face of a gun before, so perhaps it wasn’t that surprising. “If you’re genuinely uncomfortable I can stop.” Duke then added. “Sorry - first instinct is to make fun of every inch of my trauma.”   


“No, it’s- it’s fine. So long as it’s just you.” She exhaled into her hand. “Only we can laugh about this. Not that it’s  _ funny. _ ”

“It’s not funny,” Duke agreed. “In fact, it’s incredibly shitty that we can’t gush about whatever dumb puppy love we’re experiencing like we’re a couple of teenagers having a sleepover, because I’d much prefer that, but I can laugh about how absurdly miserably our lives are.” She let out another huff, this one weaker. “Especially since, as awful as it is… I can see the positives in it.”

“You? Looking at the positive side of things?” Heather raised a brow in intrigue. “I’m amazed, and also curious, because I don’t see any positives.”

“They don’t outweigh the rest of it, but at the very least, this is better than letting the guilt and shame eat away at us, right? Just… talking about it with someone who understands, maybe even growing a little from it.” Her lips curled upwards. “That’s better than keeping quiet, isn’t it?”

The sentiment was bittersweet, of course, but Heather much preferred that to lying in her bed alone as her thoughts haunted her each night, telling her that this was her life now and that it would never get better. Sure, her future had been skewed by…  _ a lot _ of things, let’s just say, but she already felt so much better than she did a week prior, so who’s to say that won’t be a pattern in her life from now on?

“I’m happy you’re here, Heather.” The words left her tongue without her noticing, escaping into the quiet air around them. Duke’s eyes twinkled with emotion, looking much more glassy than they really were in the dark, or maybe they really did shine that much, and it was only in the dark did it truly show through. The grips on one another’s hands under the covers tightened, and while Heather knew that it was perhaps a little too intimate when they knew of one another’s feelings, she couldn’t bring herself to let go, not when the conversation was still fresh in her mind, the thought of how cruel people had been to them swirling around her head. On her own, she couldn’t possibly fall asleep feeling safe, not with that idea plaguing her thoughts.

But with Heather’s hand in her own, she felt okay. Like to one another they were a reminder, some sort of proof, that in spite of what they had both gone through, they were still here and still able to smile through it all and were still strong.

It let Heather fall asleep without a single worry, not even about what the next day may bring her. Because even if it went awfully, she knew that at the end of the day, she would be back in this very spot, maybe crying, maybe laughing at what happened, and be ready to start again in hope of something better the following morning.

* * *

Heather had admittedly not even considered seeing Chandler in her math class today. Not until now, when she was sitting at her desk waiting for the class to start. Chandler wasn’t here yet, but she would be any minute, and she honestly had no idea how she was supposed to react when she sat down next to her. Perhaps she wouldn’t sit in her usual spot? But Mr Johnson wouldn’t be too happy about anyone swapping seats, so probably not.

She had little time to ponder on it, because moments later, the rest of the students walked in seconds before the lesson began, with Chandler being one of them. Though she had seen her new appearance already, she was still taken aback by the new look. It wasn’t that short hair didn’t look pretty on her - it did. But it just wasn’t  _ right. _ It was jarring and unusual and nothing like Heather was used to; she hadn’t seen her hair that short since she was eleven years old.

Predictably, Chandler did indeed sit down next to her, but she kept her head low. Heather was pretty sure she didn’t know how to act either, because her leg was already bouncing at a rapid pace under the desk. She just let her new bangs cover her vision so that Heather wouldn’t be in her line of sight, and for the first time all year, her full focus was on the board at the front of the classroom. Mr Johnson didn’t welcome back Chandler - most likely because it was a well known fact that he didn’t like her. He didn’t like Heather either. Neither of them were all that great at math.

A few minutes into the lesson, when Heather had already started to doodle random drawings on scrap paper (mainly frogs) she began to hear whispering. She imagined it had been happening for a while, but now that she actually focused on it, she could hear it in full.

“Have they talked at all?”

“No, don’t think so.”

“Oooh… do you think they’ll start arguing?”

“Now  _ that _ would be fun to watch.”

Heather wasn’t stupid - she knew they were talking about her and Chandler, and it was already starting to grate on her. She should have expected this - it’s the exact same thing Veronica had described to her yesterday, but she didn’t. Sitting next to her and not being able to look at her was already bad enough, she didn’t need people speculating about their current relationship constantly ringing in her ear. She was tempted to turn around and glare at them, but rustling next to her caught her attention. She saw Chandler ripping some paper off of an A4 piece, then writing on it. Heather only saw what it said after she lifted her (bandaged?) hand, and saw she had written,

_ Shut the fuck up or else. _

_ -Heather C. xoxo _

She immediately proceeded to fold it into an aeroplane shape, creating a small but sweet paper aeroplane, twisted around to the table behind them and flung it. Heather couldn’t help but follow it as it glided through the air and landed elegantly on the desk. One of the students looked to Chandler, confused and excited about what she had gifted them with. Chandler gave her a gentle smile, one that was deceiving, because as soon as the girl opened up the note, all enthusiasm left her. She shrank into her seat and passed it to her friend, who then passed it onto the rest of the table so that they would all get the message. Satisfied, Chandler turned back around and returned to staring at her notes, as did Heather.

Half way through the lesson came the worst part, something that couldn’t have been timed worse.

“So, for this next task, you’re to work with the person next to you,” Mr Johnson announced. While most people were excited - mainly because they weren’t going to do the task at all, this was just an opportunity to talk without being told off, and Heather would have normally felt the same way - Heather could only dread it. They  _ had _ to talk, even if it wasn’t friendly. It was at least easy when they didn’t have to look at each other, but now they have to interact?

He explained the task - something about working out the problem on the board together - then sat down and let everyone begin. Chatter immediately began in the room, most of it likely not being relevant to math at all, while Heather and Heather could only slowly and awkwardly turn towards each other.

_ I’m not supposed to be talking to her, _ Heather thought to herself as she stared back at Chandler, debating with herself on what to do.  _ But… Veronica said he was okay with me talking to her, and I  _ really _ want to talk to her, even if it’s just for a little bit. _

And to be perfectly honest, though she knew she was siding with Veronica not  _ just _ for Veronica, but because she figured it was the right thing to do… things seemed to already be improving. The favour she was doing for JD was unexpected, but definitely some sort of progress, right? And Betty had been nowhere near as bitter towards her when they had spoken yesterday - in fact, there was no malice at all. They just seemed to be…  _ fine. _

“Were you listening to any of that?” she blurted out, breaking the awkward silence. Chandler seemed surprised and snapped her head up from her notes to look at her, like she hadn’t expected her to talk.

“No,” she replied. “Not entirely sure what we’re supposed to be doing.”

“Working out that problem on the board,” Heather replied. Chandler looked at the board and took a moment, or a few, to figure out what it said, before snorting to herself.

“How do we use the Pythagorean theorem to work out the size of a  _ window? _ ” she quipped. “Just use measuring tape, you pillowcase.”

Heather couldn’t help but laugh. She’d missed her jabs and jokes.

“Maybe it’s too high up.”

“But they know the measurement of the bottom of the window and the side. They measured it  _ somehow. _ ”

“Maybe the ladder broke.”

Chandler paused for a moment. “Can’t argue with that.”

They both faintly chuckled, as if they’d found some form of normalcy again, only for it to fade when Heather became unsure about what else to say, because this still wasn’t normal. Chandler’s short hair was a constant reminder of that.

“So… when did you cut your hair?”

Chandler’s eyes grew alert.

“When did you cut yours?” she said

“Mine? The other week, with Veronica.” She ran her hand over the fuzz that had grown slightly, making it softer than it once was. “I thought an undercut would be fun.” She eyed her suspiciously. “Again, what about you?”

Chandler hesitated. “Last week.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Heather did it for me.” She seemed to notice something about Heather’s gaze and sighed. “If you’re worrying about me, don’t.”   


“But you’ve been growing your hair out since you were in middle school. What made you want to cut it?”

“It doesn’t matter - should you even be talking to me right now, Heather?” She raised a brow. Heather was scared she was angry at her for a moment, but her gaze softened. “You sided with Veronica, and it’s not like I blame you - what I did was wrong and all. Yet you still wanna talk to me?”

“I just… haven’t spoken to you in a while.”

“I know,” Chandler frowned, “I’m not saying I’m not happy that you are, but…” She swirled a long nail around the surface of the table. “If it’s because you’re worried about me, then again, don’t. You don’t have to check up on me.”

“If you’re sure,” Heather murmured, and after a brief pause,

“So how have you been?” Chandler asked.

“Me?”

“Yeah. I know a lot of things have changed, so I was wondering how you were… adjusting.”

“Oh. Well…” She twirled her hair around her finger sheepishly, flattered that she knew to ask. Not that there was any reason why she wouldn’t know. “It was tricky at first, but… I’m managing. It’s nice note having to conform to rules so much now that everything’s a little more chaotic.”

“I see.” The corner of Chandler’s mouth turned up. “I’m glad you’re coping.”

“Thanks, me too. Oh! And I played my first soccer game the other week - and I-”

“You took the winning shot.”   


Heather widened her eyes. “How did you know? Did Heather tell you?”

“No, I, um… I was there. Sort of.” She chuckled nervously. “I couldn’t get up close because I wasn’t allowed on school property, but I watched from a distance.”

Heather felt her heart flutter, which she felt obliged to ignore. “You did?”

Chandler half-smiled at her. “I told you I wouldn’t miss it.”

As Heather tried to figure out how to process that information without embracing her in the most grateful hug, Mr Johnson interrupted her thoughts with a,

“Two more minutes, class."

“Shit,” Chandler muttered. “We don’t have anything.”   


“We don’t - what if he calls on us?” Heather panicked and began to read over the question again, while Chandler’s methods, of course, were different. Leaning over to the table next to her, she asked,

“Hey, what’s the answer?”

The pair she ended up questioning quickly answered, most likely from fear of what she would do if they didn’t comply.

“Um… 5 meters.”

“Cool. Thanks.” Chandler wrote the complete sum down and dropped her pen, satisfied. Heather tried not to chuckle.

“Heather, we don’t have any working to show.”   


“Do we really need it?”

“We could be asked to show it.”

“ _ Ugh. _ ” She looked like she was about to lean over again and ask for notes, but Heather stopped her.

“Heather, if you keep talking to other groups we might get caught!”

Chandler pouted in an adorably disgruntled way that Heather hadn’t realised she’d missed so much. “But I don’t know how to get the answer.”

“Okay, um, let’s figure it out.”

“But I don’t  _ get _ it!” Chandler complained. “Where do the letters come in? How does that help you find the answer?”

“Well… the letters are just replacements for the numbers,” Heather explained. “They’re not  _ actually _ there.”

“Then why are they written?”

“It’s just the formula! It’s like an example.” She pointed to the complete sum. “And we have our answer already. 3 squared plus 4 squared equals 5 squared. We just need to times 3 by itself as well as 4 by itself, then figure out the square root of whatever that answer is.” She took a moment to mentally pat herself on the back for remembering all of that. “Here, I’ll do it.”   


“Wait, so the letters are completely irrelevant?"

“Yeah. It’s confusing, I know, but they’re not really there.”

“ _ Oh. _ ” Chandler slapped her forehead. “That makes  _ so _ much more sense.”

Heather bit back the need to giggle, and instead distracted herself with writing down some fake working out. She finished it just in time, and it’s a good thing they figured it out too since the pair of them were the first one he picked on. He asked Chandler to speak, and so she did, managing to get through it with only a couple of slip ups, and Mr Johnson actually seemed vaguely impressed.

“I’m glad you finally got the hang of Pythag, Heather. Even if it took you awhile,” he commented. “Okay, Hazel and Josh, what did you get?”

“Rude,” Chandler mumbled under her breath at the vague quip thrown at her. Heather just smiled at her proudly.

“You did great.”

Chandler blinked at her, her gaze softening.

“Thanks.”

They were the last things they said to one another before the lesson continued up until the next bell rang, and so everyone eagerly stood up and left the classroom. Heather and Heather stayed at each other’s side up until they were in the hallway, where they turned around to face one another, both uncertain of what the next step was.

“It was nice talking to you, Heather,” Heather said with a bittersweet smile.

“You too,” Chandler replied. “Thanks for talking to me, all things considered.”

“It’s no problem.”

What was a problem, however, is the fact that seeing Chandler walk away hurt a lot more than Heather initially planned. Of course, she had missed her dearly this whole time, no matter how well she adjusted to life revolving around her, but now that they’d actually spoken, and Chandler had even admitted to attending something Heather thought she didn’t even care about without her knowledge, being apart from her now felt a lot more difficult than she thought it could ever be.  


* * *

“Don’t you just look full of joy today."

Heather glanced to her side and saw that JD had appeared, eyeing her expression curiously. She simply held out her hand and made a grabbing motion.

“Hand,” she instructed, glancing around at the other students who were already looking in their direction with intrigue, as if seeing them doing romantic couple shit was a legend to only be believed in person. JD rolled his eyes but placed his hand in hers anyway, coming to stand by her side. Their shoulders brushed, and Heather supposed it was fine, with how it made things more convincing. She still needed to convince him to wash that fucking trenchcoat though.

“Something gotten you down?” he asked.

“Not necessarily,” she said. “I had math with Mac before-”

“Ain’t that a mouthful.”

“-And she actually spoke to me, which I didn’t expect.”

“Oh. That a good thing?”

“I guess?” She shrugged. “I’m just confused now. She sided with Veronica, but she still wants to be with me.”

“I imagine she just misses you.”

“I suppose.”

The door to their next class opened, interrupting them. The class flooded inside, with the pair of them being one of the first, thanks to Heather. Their teacher noticed their linked hands as they walked past him and shot them a surprised and slightly weirded out look, but said nothing more, instead just going to wait at the front of the classroom so that he could begin the lesson.

“Alright class, if you remember from last lesson, you’re to be working in twos today.”

“We are?” Heather muttered to JD, who had stolen his hand back now that they were sitting behind a desk. Not his usual spot - he preferred to sit across the room from her, but it seems Heather had borrowed him for the day and sat him down at her table.

“Yeah. We’re assessing each other’s work today.”

“Ew.” She crossed her arms indignantly. “Well, go easy on me, I’ve been away from two weeks and therefore am  _ pretty _ behind.”

“Way to assume we’re gonna be partners,” JD said. Heather raised a brow at him.

“Would you rather partner up with someone else?”

JD grimaced as he looked over his other options. Heather assumed the thought of talking to someone new was bad enough, but now that he actually had a reputation in the school, being questioned on what it was like being Heather Chandler’s boyfriend was likely even worse.

“It’ll be convincing if we partner up,” he said. Heather snickered.

“Exactly.” From the corner of her eye, a pile of sheets were slid over to her table by one of the people on the table nearby, and so she picked two of them off and went to pass them off to the next table and sat back down. She looked over her worksheet and could have groaned at the amount of boxes to fill out. Their teacher sent them to grab their project, and when they sat down with them, Heather realised how behind she was. JD’s model, as well as everyone else’s, were pretty much finished. Hers hadn’t even been painted yet.

“Again, be nice, I’m behind,” she grumbled.

“As nice as I can be.”

“Why don’t I trust that?”

“Who knows.”

They swapped their models, and Heather got a good look at his model. It appeared to be a small house - somewhat like the bird house she had built - but attached to a floor that looked like it was supposed to fit in a small corner. It had a little ramp up to the floor as it was held up by four legs, and so far, Heather found no flaws.

“What is it?” she asked, flipping it around a few times.

“A hamster home. Shelter? Something like that,” he said. “My hamster’s tank needs some updating, so I thought why not make one?”

“Oh. That’s kinda neat.”

“Is yours a birdhouse, by any chance?” He asked with a grin.

“An  _ unfinished _ one, yes,” she replied.

“I was gonna ask how it was gonna stay in a tree.” He ran a finger across the smooth roof. “Doesn’t have anything to hook onto.”

“I was gonna add it!”

“Yeah, well, I’m still writing that down.”

Heather scowled at him as he filled in the, ‘What could this person add to improve their model?’ box, before immediately going to search for things to write about his model.

“Okay, well-” she started, frantically looking for flaws. Only, she couldn’t actually find any. “Um…”

“Yes?” He smirked, resting his cheek in his palm. She frowned at his smugness.

“Is your hamster going to  _ like _ this?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm. You don’t know that.” And so she began to write, though she made it sound more formal with, ‘Has not yet been tested on the animal it is made for.’ JD let out a “tch” but argued no more, instead went back to her own model. He let out a hum.

“The back wall’s crooked.”

“So?”

“So it’s not neat? And, hm,” he flipped it over to look at the bottom, “it means there’s a slight gap in the corner. Tiny to us, but not to a tiny bird. It could get its foot stuck in there.”

Heather stared at him as he gleefully added another thing to her peer review sheet, while she continued to struggle to find her own criticisms to write about.

The problem was, apparently JD was actually  _ very _ good at building things. There wasn’t a single screw slightly loose, a single slightly wobbly leg, not even any overlapping or underlapping walls. Everything was practically perfect, and while she was impressed by his skill, she was also irritated, because JD was definitely not having the same problem writing about her work. “I get it, I’m not good at building things,” she grumbled, watching him find that one of the walls wasn’t sawed straight.

“No, you’re not.”

“Fuck you.” She pouted as she proceeded to begin writing more positive feedback, since she was pretty stumped with the negatives.

“Only playing. Though I am surprised. I thought you’d be a perfectionist.”

“I’m just trying to pass,” she said. “And… woodworking is a little difficult, I suppose.”

“It’s okay to be bad at subjects.”

She kicked his shin under the desk. He silently yelped, while she just smirked.

“I thought you were trying to be nicer,” he quipped.

“To some extent.” She raised a brow. “Did that actually hurt?”

“Not particularly.”

“I’ll try harder next time.”

JD then shoved his boot into her ankle. She yelped a little bit too loudly, even though it was as painful as a pinch.

“I’ve always wanted to do that to a popular girl,” he said, eyes twinkling with wonder.

“No need to look like Christmas has come early,” she grumbled, slightly weirded out by how expressive he’d become after inflicting (minor) pain on her.

“Technically speaking, I’m Jewish.” His pen moved down to the positive feedback boxes. “Though it has been a while since my dad bothered celebrating a holiday with me.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “If it makes you feel better, I hate Christmas a lot.”

“Why’s that?”

“Family sucks.”

“Oh. That’s understandable.” He focused on writing for a moment, before speaking again. “Kinda wish I was there to see you knock my dad out with a tree branch.”

Heather snickered to herself at the memory. It had been pretty ballsy, even for her, but she couldn’t deny that she had enjoyed doing it.

“You owe me for that. If you ever see my parents, throw something at them.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno, a shoe?”

“Why would I have a spare shoe?”

Heather was about to correct him and say that she had literally seen him pull a shoe out of his trenchcoat and had thrown it at Kurt and Ram before, but decided that it ultimately wasn’t worth it. She didn’t believe in the supernatural, but if vibrations were real, JD’s trenchcoat had the worst of them.

“Are you okay living with them?”

She hadn’t realised she’d been staring at her work blankly until JD spoke up again. She glanced up at him and grimaced. A glint of concern could be seen in his eyes.

“Not good?”

“Well, no, but, um…” She glanced around the classroom, and while the tables were spread out pretty far, she dreaded to think about the rumours that would sprout if anyone were eavesdropping on them. She leaned close to his ear and whispered, “I moved out.”

“You did? When?”

She leaned back again. “Just a couple of days ago, actually.” She sheepishly bit the inside of her cheek. “I’m staying at Heather’s, for the time being.”

“Oh.” JD looked a little solemn, before holding up his hand. “Homeless gang?”

Heather internally thanked that he knew to say that quietly. She stifled laughter that she couldn’t tell if it was real or fake and quite happily pressed her hand against his.

“Homeless gang.”

Somehow, in some form of strange solidarity in several unfortunate things, their hands stayed attached as they fell back under the table, and Heather noticed that his hand wasn’t as clammy as she thought it was, and that holding it wasn’t the worst feeling in the world. Alas, she had to let go, because it was her writing hand he was holding, and she would like to fill in at least half of these boxes.

“So what was your hamster’s name again?” she asked.

“Jack the Ripper.”

“Ah, that was it.” She turned to deadpan at him. “One question.”

“Yes?”

“ _ Why? _ ”

“There’s no proof to say that Jack the Ripper wasn’t a hamster.”

“I- I mean…" There was  _ so _ much she could say in response to that. “Are you implying you captured Jack the Ripper himself?” That was not one of the things she was planning on saying at all.

“Jack the Ripper could have very well been a woman, Heather.”

“Or a hamster.”

“ _ Exactly. _ See, you get me.”

“I- I don’t think I do.”

JD found her confusion amusing, apparently, though to save her from losing her mind over the thought of the most famous serial killer just being a hamster this whole time, he moved the conversation along.

“So do  _ you _ have any pets?”

“Yeah. They’re new, actually.”

“Oh, several? Let me guess.” His brow furrowed in thought. “Goldfish.”

“Nope. Too high maintenance.”

“I appreciate a woman who doesn’t impulse buy goldfish.”

“Uh- thank you?” She wasn’t entirely sure if it was a compliment or a joke, but either way, it was oddly flattering.

“Is it  _ any _ type of fish?”

“No.”

“Hamsters, then? Though, they best be in separate enclosures if that was the case.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Guinea pigs?”

“No, but I do like guinea pigs.”

“Rabbits?”

“I would  _ love _ a rabbit, but no.” She sighed. “I’ll give you a hint, they’re easily hideable pets.”

“Oh, secret pets. I see.” He tapped his pen against the desk. “I can’t think of what you could hide. Well, I  _ can, _ but none of them strike me as  _ you. _ ”

Heather smirked, knowing full well that her pets were the last thing on his list. “Give up?”

“Usually, yes, but as it’s you, absolutely not.” He straightened himself up and swirled around on his stool, leaning forward. “Okay, um, gerbils? Mice? Rats?”

“No.”

“Fuck.” He bit his lip and Heather cackled.

“Come on, you can think of more pets,” she teased.

“You’d never own anything I’m thinking of on this list.”

“Try me.”

JD narrowed his gaze in determination. “Snake.”

“No, but that would be a pretty cool pet.”   


JD seemed surprised and intrigued, especially since her interest in ‘less-adorable’ pets was the biggest hint he had to work with. “Lizard of any sort?”

“Nope.”

“Uh… tarantula? Please say tarantula, I’ve always wanted one.”

“I’m an arachnophobe so no.” She tilted her head. “You’re getting closer though.”

He blinked at her. “I am?”

“Yes.”

“Thought I was going off the rails, but alright. Um… snails?”

“That would be  _ amazing _ but unfortunately not.”

Again, JD seemed surprised.

“Stick insects?”

“You’re getting warmer.”

“What the hell?” He stared at her, dumbfounded. “Crickets? Scorpions? Cockroaches?”

“There, you got it. Eventually.” She gave him a congratulatory pat on the head. “I own two cockroaches.”

“That’s not at all what I expected, but now I wanna see them.”

“You’d have to ask Heather if you can come over to her house, but I’ll gladly show them to you.”

“Do they have names?”

“Peanut Butter and Almond Butter.”

He burst out laughing, so she scorned at him.

“Okay,  _ Jack the Ripper. _ ”

“Hey, that’s  _ cool. _ ”

“Peanut and Almond is  _ cute. _ ”

“For cockroaches?”

“Yes! Be nice about them, Almond almost  _ died _ the other day.”

“Is that an exaggeration?”

“No, my dad tried to crush her.”

JD widened his eyes. “Okay, so, about the throwing things at your parents thing…”

Heather snickered. “I could tell you a lot of the things that they’ve done.” She hesitated, the more she considered it. “But… I don’t know if you want to hear it.”

“I don’t mind listening, but you don’t have to tell me.”

The corner of her mouth flickered up for a split second.

“Maybe one day."

“Heather, Jason.”

Both of them snapped their heads to the front of the room, and saw that Mr Harrop was glaring at them. A few students had also turned to look at them too, or perhaps they had been staring for a while, trying to figure out how the hell they were getting along, nevermind ‘dating’ (and in fairness to them, they weren’t alone on that thought).

“You better be discussing work-related things,” he warned. “I know new relationships are exciting and all, but it shouldn’t distract you from what’s important.”

Though their relationship wasn’t real, Heather was still offended by his gripe. She rolled her eyes when he looked back down at his own desk, then shot a few glares in the directions of staring eyes, who quickly looked away when coming into contact with her gaze. Seeing other students looking at them weirdly reminded her of what probably should have been the first thing to ask JD to begin with.

“So has anyone bothered you today?”

JD shrugged. “A few whispers here and there, but I’m pretty sure it’s because our  _ thing _ is just new gossip.”   


“Oh, don’t worry, that’s all it’ll be.” She smiled in satisfaction. So far her insane plan had worked swimmingly. “If anyone does, though, just point them out in a crowd. Heather and I will sort it.”   


“Will do, though I can fend for myself, you know.”   


“Heather and I fight with words, not violence. Usually. It’ll save you some stitches, ‘kay?”

“Can’t argue with that.” She saw a vague smile linger on his lips, and Heather wondered if she should feel proud that she seemed to have cracked his deadpan stare, or grateful that he’d willingly let it down for her.

Perhaps a little bit of both.

* * *

“Hey, Heather.”

Heather jolted in surprise at the feeling of hands on her hips, snaking from around her. She glanced up from her book and saw Veronica standing behind her, resting her chin on her shoulder. She squeaked, both flustered and concerned about her boldness.

“We’re doing this in public now?”

“No one’s in here,” Veronica replied, looking around the empty student room. “I thought I’d find you off alone somewhere.” She let go of her and instead leaned against her chair, hunching over slightly. Heather twisted around to face her, marking her book before closing it.

“Were you looking for me?”

“I haven’t seen you much lately,” Veronica said, something underlying in her tone. “And I wanted to see if you wanted to sit with us at lunch today.” Her eyes flickered away. “I know you get nervous about eating in front of the others and whatnot, so it’s okay if you don’t want to, I just thought I’d ask.”

Heather shifted in her seat with uncertainty.  _ But what about Heather? _ She wanted to say that, but she knew she couldn’t - not in front of Veronica. Which felt ridiculous, but she knew that even if Veronica tried to act chill about it, she’d most definitely be offended in some way.

“I may come hang out in a bit,” she said. “But I’d rather not make it a common occurrence to sit with your friends without eating. I don’t want them to be suspicious that there’s something wrong.”

“That’s alright,” Veronica said with an understanding smile. “I just miss you, is all.”

“I’m always around, dumbass,” she pointed out, kneeling on the chair to reach up and plant a kiss on her lips. Veronica’s eyes fluttered shut and stayed shut long after she’d leaned back again, a smile continuously growing.

“Snap out of it, lovebird.” Heather snapped her fingers in front of her face while trying to hold back a smile of her own. Veronica opened her eyes and giggled.

“At least walk me to the cafeteria, then? If you’re not coming to stay.”

“As you wish.”

Tucking her book under her arm, Heather stood up and led Veronica out of the student room. They walked down the hallways for a few moments, up until a familiar face zoomed by, skidding to a halt when she realised who she was passing.

“Hi, Betty,” Veronica said. “You coming to lunch?”

“Hey! I will in a bit, I was just going to meet Martha by the music rooms first. She said something about staying behind to talk about a recent assignment,” Betty replied. “Hey, Heather, you sitting with us today?”

“I might afterwards. I have stuff I need to do first.”

“Fair enough. See in about… dunno, fifteen minutes? I doubt Martha will be long.”

“Yeah, sure,” Veronica replied, ready to give her a wave goodbye, before,

“Ah-hah! Found her.”

A voice that Heather could only imagine was grating for Veronica could be heard from further down the hallway, turning the corner. Heather saw Veronica’s friendly expression drop to a disconcerted one upon seeing Heather Chandler appear, though it seemed to relax slightly when she saw that JD was walking beside her. Granted, the sight of their linked arms was enough for her to grow wary again, mostly from how jarring the sight was, and Heather could agree with her on that one. There wasn’t even that many people around, they were all at the cafeteria; why did they feel the need to show physical contact?

“Hey, Finn,” Chandler called, catching Betty’s attention. She stopped just in front of Betty, along with JD, and shot Heather a friendly smile, all the while avoiding Veronica’s judgemental gaze.

“Mhmm?” Betty asked.

“You still owe us twenty dollars.”

Heather looked to Veronica again out of curiosity, and saw her expression turn vexed, though she said nothing.

“Fuck, I was hoping you forgot about that,” Betty muttered. Heather watched Veronica just grow confused. “And, correction, I owe  _ JD _ twenty dollars.”   


“Yeah, well, we wanna use it for slushies, so technically it’s  _ ours, _ ” Chandler replied with a smirk, drumming her fingers on JD’s sleeve. “Call it a faux-shared bank account.”

“Faux in more ways than one,” Betty quipped, eyeing the two of them. “And I can’t promise I actually  _ have _ twenty dollars on me,” she added as she took her wallet out of her pocket and began to rummage through it.   


“Well, give us ten then, slushies aren’t expensive,” Chandler said, holding out her hand in waiting. Betty rolled her eyes, but it seemed to be a lot more fondly than it ever had been when Chandler had been involved. Eventually she pulled out two five dollar notes and handed them over, only to snatch them back seconds before Chandler managed to grab them.

“Only if you get me some twizzlers too.”

Chandler rolled her eyes. “Yeah, whatever. But take that out of the money you owe us.”   


“I owe  _ JD. _ ”

“Still.”

Betty handed the money over and Chandler grinned in victory. She handed it to JD who also smirked a little and shoved it in his blazer, before waving goodbye to Betty.

“Have fun. Don’t get caught escaping school.”

“We won’t,” Chandler reassured her dismissively as they both turned around and scurried off, presumably to the parking lot. The two of them snickered amongst themselves excitedly as they left with their arms still interlocked despite having so few witnesses to prove to, and Heather had to pity Veronica. At least Heather was able to get an, albeit vague explanation from Chandler as to how she could suddenly tolerate JD - to Veronica, all of this came out of bum-fuck nowhere. It was visible in her expression, too. She looked completely flabbergasted.

“Did she just take your money?” Veronica asked, staring at Betty with irritation. Betty seemed unphased by the loss of her ten dollars and shrugged.

“Technically I  _ did _ owe JD twenty dollars - ten now. If he wants to use that on Heather, he can do that. Sure, she’s rich and could buy it herself, but it’s his money to waste, not mine.” She sighed, mourning for the empty space in her wallet that she sulkily slipped back in her pocket. “That’s what I get for betting on her sexuality.”

“I’m sorry, you did  _ what? _ ” Heather leaned forward slightly, both interested and concerned. Betty stepped closer so she could lower her voice.

“A while ago JD and I betted on what all the Heathers’ sexualities were, except we didn’t because we both agreed McNamara was a lesbian - and we were right - and we didn’t bet on you because we still had baggage at the time.”

Heather narrowed her gaze. “Be real though - if you  _ had, _ would you have won?”

“No, I thought you were straight out of spite.”

“Okay, leave.” Heather pointed down the hallway, sending her away on her walk of shame. “Bye.”

Betty lowered her head in acceptance. “I deserve that. I’ll see you later.”

“Bye, I guess,” Veronica added hesitantly. “Wait, wait.”

“Yes?” Betty paused and swirled back around on her heel.

“What do you mean you lost that bet? Even  _ I’ve _ never heard Heather name her sexuality. How do you know what it is?”

Betty opened her mouth, though it took a moment for the words to come out.

“I… there’s a lot to unpack there, come to think of it. Could I tell you at a better time? I  _ really _ need to go find Martha.”

“But-”

“I’ll tell you real soon, Veronica, I promise.” Betty began to back away. “It’s just, um,  _ a lot. _ ”

“What do you  _ mean? _ ” Veronica yelled after her, but by then, she’d already walked out of earshot, or perhaps she chose to ignore Veronica’s pleads. Heather felt a little sorry that Veronica had been left hanging on such a significant detail, but she knew she likely didn’t know the whole of it, and in the middle of a school corridor likely wasn’t the best place to tell the full story.

“I’m sure she’ll tell you soon enough, don’t worry.” Heather patted her arm sympathetically. Veronica shook her head.

“No, I- am I  _ missing _ something?” She snapped her head towards her. “Is it me, or is Betty  _ far _ too chill around Heather? What, did they talk it out while I wasn’t looking?”

Heather frowned. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“Y-yes? No? I…” Veronica’s face sank into her hands. “I don’t know! I don’t know  _ what’s _ happening anymore!”

“Be more specific,” Heather sighed in exasperation, leaning her hip against the lockers. “Go on, see if I can help you process this.”   


“Where do I start?”

“It sounds to me that you’re struggling to take in that your friends are fine talking to Heather,” Heather said. “Why’s that?”

“Because… she hurt them? Because she put them in danger? Because this isn’t the first time she’s hurt them? Need I go on?”

“Has it occurred to you that she’s trying to make up for her mistakes?” Heather sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her thumb and finger. “And that the people she hurt are happy about that?”

“Well… sure, maybe I should have expected that, but…” Veronica trailed off, looking off to the side with a disgruntled look. “I don’t know. It rubs me the wong way.”   


“Why’s that?” Heather raised a brow. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“Well, yes, it is, but…” She sighed. “I mean, face it Heather, it’s just so  _ I _ forgive her. That’s all this is.”

Heather’s gaze narrowed. “You don’t know that.”

“Not for sure, but it’s most likely.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because she- she’s not a good person, Heather! Good intentions just aren’t in her best interest!  _ Surely _ you know that?”

Heather wasn’t sure  _ what _ it was about those two words that grated on her like sandpaper against an open wound, but it made her grit her teeth as she pulled on her hair in a frustrated manner, her black locks sliding out of the red scrunchie holding it all together. The scrunchie eventually slipped off, which she managed to catch before it hit the ground, and after taking a deep breath, she grabbed Veronica’s sleeve and pulled her back to the student room they had just come from.

“Heather, where are we-”

“Just-” She silenced her until they were back in the room, which was thankfully still empty. She closed the door, blocking out anyone who may eavesdrop, and turned around to face a very confused Veronica.

“Veronica,” she began, trying to keep a calm tone, “I have never faulted you for being mad at Heather. What she did was wrong, and having empathy for the people who she hurt is anything but a bad thing.  _ However, _ ” she stepped closer to her, “this feels less like you having empathy for us, and more like you wanting to be mad  _ for _ us.”

Veronica blinked at her, discomfort visible in her flickering gaze. “What makes you say that?”

“Because, have you noticed, Veronica, that everyone, at least who we know of, who Heather hurt, is talking to her? All those people you’re angry for?” She didn’t mean to raise her voice slightly, but something was bubbling inside her that felt like it needed to be released. “The only person not talking to her is  _ you. _ ”

“Neither is Heather,” Veronica retorted. Heather scoffed.

“Yeah, because she sided with you and she’s trying to do the right thing, and you’re pretty convinced that you’re in the right.”

“Are you saying I’m  _ not? _ She started all of this!” It was Veronica’s turn to raise her voice. “Do you think I  _ like _ being mad at her? Do you think I don’t want to talk to her or be with her or kiss her again? Because I do, more than anything - but I can’t!”

“Why  _ not? _ ”

“Because- because she-”

“Because she’s not a good person? News flash for you, V,  _ neither are you! _ ” Veronica visibly flinched at her near-yelling. “None of us are, I thought you  _ knew _ that! I’m not, Heather’s not, Emmy’s not,  _ you’re _ not. We know this, because that’s just what it takes to survive around here! The difference between you and me is that I can fucking own that, meanwhile you’re just  _ ashamed. _ ”

Veronica winced. “Am I meant to be  _ proud _ of being a bad person?”

“No, but you shouldn’t be addicted to being a good one either.”

“I’m not  _ addicted- _ ”

“Yes you are! You walked out on Heather because you somehow only just had a revelation that she does shitty things, yet somehow  _ I _ stayed, and yet I’m the one who got the most  _ hurt! _ And am I mad at her?  _ Yes, I am! _ I always was, but I pushed it down because I know now that she can be better, and I wanted to hold onto that. At first I could see why you were upset, but why  _ now? _ JD’s under her protection, Betty and Martha are at least tolerating her, and I’m-”  _ falling for her, _ “-still her best friend. Who are you mad for, Veronica?”

“I… she… she’s still-”

“Mean? A bitch? Cruel? Selfish? Stop acting like you didn’t know any of that when you became her girlfriend, Veronica! Just admit you’re ashamed you fell in love with a bad person! You don’t want things to get better, you just want to prove you have any goddamn morals left!”

Veronica widened her eyes, her open mouth twitching as she tried to find her words to argue back. Eventually, her glassy eyes just darkened, the light caught in them trapped.

“Are you  _ telling _ me to forgive her?” she accused.

“No, I’m-” Heather sighed, lowering her voice again. “You can do whatever you want, Veronica. If you never want to talk to her again, then you’re not obliged to. You never were. But you keep saying that you  _ do _ want to, and I’m asking,  _ what’s stopping you? _ She’s doing her best to fix her mistakes - I thought that’s what you wanted. What more do you want from her, for her to go back in time?”

“What if what’s she’s doing isn’t enough?” Veronica snapped. “Just yesterday someone accused me of being trans. And since I actually  _ am, _ that’s kinda scary for me too, you know.”

“What?” Heather stared at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was going to, but it’s kind of hard to catch you alone these days,” she muttered. “You’re always with Heather.”

“It’s been two days, V, I’m just making sure she’s adjusting okay.”

“Why? Haven’t you been through enough? Why are you smothering her?”

“I’m not!”  _ She’s been in a bad place. _ She bit her lip.  _ And I care a lot about her. _

“Then why do you want us to get back together so badly?”

“Because- because  _ you _ want you to get back together!”

“Are you sure you’re not just trying to make your relationship with her more convenient?”

Heather froze.

“What?”

Veronica lowered her gaze, as if it was a sensitive topic for her too. “We’re not stupid, Heather. Heather and I can tell  _ something’s _ going on.”

“Nothing is,” Heather said, her voice shaking slightly.

“Heather, checking on her to make sure she’s okay is one thing, but you visited her  _ excessively. _ And now that she’s back, you’re  _ always _ with her. I don’t know if I’ve been looking into things wrong, but…” She wrapped her arms around herself and shrugged. “I dunno. I just assumed you’d tell us if something was happening.”

“Nothing’s happening,” Heather told her. “We’re not together.”

Veronica scanned her, analysing her nervousness, and frowned. “But…?”

Heather shrank under her gaze. “But… I do like her.” The words were a mumble. “And we did kiss, but it didn’t go anywhere. Because you’re right, dating her right now isn’t convenient at all.”

“You kissed?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Um… last week.”

Veronica stared at her. “And you didn’t tell us?”

“I was going to! I just thought now wasn’t the best time-”

“Heather, that’s  _ cheating. _ ”

She paused. “Huh?”

“I…” Veronica ran her fingers through her hair. “If we were all together, I’d be  _ overjoyed, _ but we’re not… we’re not together, Heather.”

“Oh.” Heather let those words sink in. “Right. You’re… you’re not.”

“What, did you only just realise that?”

“I mean…  _ yeah. _ You didn’t exactly make it clear if this was a break or a breakup, Veronica. In fact, it’s  _ still _ not clear,” she shot back. “Look, I’m… I’m sorry I kissed her and didn’t tell you. It was wrong, and I would never do something like that if it was anyone else, I just…” She pulled on the scrunchie on her wrist as she tried to hold back the aching in her throat. “It hasn’t exactly processed in my head that we’re not all together, okay? I keep thinking that this is all going to pass and everything will be fixed - I  _ still _ think it will be, once you stop being so…”

“So  _ what? _ ”

“So  _ stubborn. _ ” She glowered at her. “I’m sorry for what I did, but maybe this wouldn’t be so complicated if you didn’t have to drag this out because of your obsession with convincing everyone you’re above it all. Because you’re  _ not _ Veronica. Rather than being so… so  _ preformative, _ how about you just shut up and do something good in your life instead? That’s what I’m trying to do! I know I’m pretty rotten, but at least I’m trying.” She laughed at the misfortune. “You can start by making it easier on me by not having me have to swim back and forth between you and Heather.”

Veronica snarled. “I never asked you to swim back to me. If I’m such a weight on your shoulders, then just  _ drop _ me.”

Heather sneered back. “You know what?  _ Great idea! _ It’s been a while since you’ve had one of those!”

With that, Heather turned around and stormed out the room, enraged, slamming the door behind her. Before she could march elsewhere though, she found herself standing right in front of Emmy, who had a worried expression on her face as she stumbled out of her way. Realising she had been standing outside the room for God knows how long, she just lowered her head and ran, swallowing back the painful lump in her throat and she hurried down the hallways.

“Real men don’t cry, you know,” someone jeered at her, and while she knew it was supposed to be an insult, the backwardness of their logic was strangely validating as she stumbled into the bathroom which was thankfully empty, or she’d have to cry an attempt to yell for whoever to get out. Instead she hunched over the sink, hands on the counter as she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to hold back her tears. She sniffled and would occasionally exhale sharply, but she refused to cry. Not here.

She was so focused on swallowing her tears that she didn’t hear the door slowly opening. Had it been a stranger, this would be an embarrassing and pathetic sight to see, but luckily for her, a warm hand landed on top of hers and a soft voice spoke,

“Heather?”

So Emmy had followed her. She opened her eyes and realised her vision was too watery for her to see her face, but she could feel the sympathetic gaze being given to her.

“How much of that did you hear?” she muttered.

“Enough. Some of it was muffled, but I got the general idea.”

“Right.” She sniffed. “Sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“Dunno. That you had to hear all of that,” she murmured. “And, genuinely, for not telling you about Heather and I.”

“It’s… it’s okay, Heather, I don’t care.”

“You don’t?”

“I know you would have wanted to tell us. And I know you’d never keep something like that a secret if it was someone outside our circle.”

Heather sighed, pressing her palm against an eye where tears were leaking. “I just wanted to wait for all of this to clean up first,” she said weakly, “but now I’m not sure if they ever will.”

“They will, I’m sure,” she reassured, hopping onto the counter. She gently pushed Heather back before pulling her close to her, letting her head land on her chest. Heather was hesitant, but the embrace was warm and comforting and she couldn’t bring herself to pull away, especially not now. She listened to Emmy’s heartbeat, the steady pace helping her breathing slow, her chest feeling more like the pillow she had cried into over the past few weeks. She let the tears stream, feeling relief in finally letting them go.

“How much have you been carrying, Heather?” she then heard Emmy murmur.

“Hm?”

“I think… you’ve been carrying a lot on your shoulders,” Emmy said. “I’m scared its wearing you down.”

“Oh.” She sighed shakily, pressing further into her chest, feeling Emmy’s chin rest on her head.

“You’ve already taken so much from the school,” she said softly. “That’s already enough, but then you’ve been going back and forth between Heather and us.”

“Mhmm…” She slowly nodded, blinking more tears out of her eyes.

“And I know you’ve been taking care of Heather,” she added. “I still don’t know what’s wrong, and I don’t believe her when she tells me she’s fine, but I know there’s something that you’ve been dealing with.”

_ How about hiding a whole person from your parents? _ “You can definitely say that.” She laughed as her voice quivered.

“And you’ve been taking care of us,” Emmy said, pressing her lips against her head. “And I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“For adding to it. You’re already doing so much - too much, even. You shouldn’t have to take care of all of us too.” She cupped her chin and tilted it up. She was met with a gaze that somehow made Heather want to sob her eyes out. “I know you’re trying to be strong, and it’s really admirable, but you shouldn’t let yourself crack just to prove that you can handle it.”

And that was enough for her to let out a wave of sobs. It was only a short wave, but one much needed, as she buried her face into her yellow blouse, likely getting mascara and eyeliner on the fabric. But Emmy didn’t care, she simply held her for as long as she needed, caressing her back to soothe her uneven breathing.

“On top of it all, I’m just trying to  _ recover, _ ” she weeped. “I was doing better before this, but… I… it’s hard, being so overwhelmed. Sometimes I just end up binging and it’s just…” She sniffed, lifting her head up again. “I’m really trying, and I promise I’m usually okay, it just sometimes gets to me.”   


“It’s okay that it does.” Emmy cupped her face and stroked her cheeks with her thumbs as she smiled down at her. “You’re doing more than most people could handle.”

“I know.” She breathed out. “Oh, can’t forget the budding feelings for Heather either.”

Emmy frowned. “You both like each other,” she mused, “but you’re not together.”

“No… kinda sucks,” she said with a huff.  _ So does sharing a bed with her. _ “I picked the worst time to crush on her, didn’t I?”

“No one controls their feelings, Heather.”

“I dunno, I’m kinda concerned about mine,” she scoffed. “What was it that made me fall for her, huh? Oh, you just put trans people like myself in danger of bullying and harassment? That’s pretty hot.”

Emmy stifled a snicker. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said with a tearful grin. “And… you don’t believe her when she tells you she’s fine? You haven’t spoken to her at all lately.”

“Well… I did today,” she confessed. “We sat next to each other in math and I couldn’t help myself.” She smiled wistfully. “You know she came to my soccer game?”   


“She did?”

“Well, from a distance, yeah.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “I… I stopped talking to her because I thought that’s what was right, but now… I don’t know what to do. I thought I took the right side at first, but I don’t know if it’s so right anymore.”   


Heather sighed. “Me neither, Heather.” She climbed onto the counter and sat next to her, resting her head on her shoulder. “I think this is just a big mess, and we’re trapped in it until it gets better.”

“It will get better, won’t it?” Emmy fretted, though she still brough up a hand, arm wrapping around the frame of her face to com and play with her hair.

“It’s what I keep telling myself,” she murmured. “I trust Heather to do what she needs to do. I just wish Veronica could do the same.”

“Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the girls are fightinnnggg
> 
> apart from mac. mac just wants everyone to get along :(
> 
> EDIT: i made a dumb little video inspired by this chapter, thought y'all would enjoy <3
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nYcnGC1_fw&feature=emb_title
> 
> https://heathersgameoftag.tumblr.com/


	3. Day Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chandler and Duke find solidarity in unlikely places. Meanwhile, Veronica commits a crime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: transphobia, referenced homophobia, referenced abusive parents, rape/sexual assault mention

“I’d say today was actually pretty good,” Chandler said. “Not many hiccups, granted, I can tell a fair few people are pissed about my choice in ‘boyfriend’, but what are they gonna do about it?” She landed on the mattress, making it bounce slightly, lying on her back and glimpsing at Heather, from what she could see from the corner of her eye. She hadn’t looked up the whole time she’d been talking, instead just staring at her diary, tapping her pen on the paper as she tried to think of things to write for her next therapy session. Unfortunately she hadn’t been able to talk about the whole  _ situation _ with the group, at least not properly, or it would mean outing herself. Granted, her therapist seemed pretty liberal, so maybe she had nothing to worry about, but she was hesitant to test those waters.

She had been thinking so hard about how to word,  _ “I got mad at my partner for refusing to talk to their girlfriend out of a need to be an unrealistically good person and realised I technically cheated on them with said girlfriend whilst arguing with them” _ in the most platonic, straight and monogamous way possible, that she hadn’t noticed Chandler sitting up and shifting around to sit in front of her.

“Hey.”

She looked up wordlessly, met with a serious glare.

“You’re quiet.”

“I’m tired.”

Chandler raised a brow skeptically. “Tired as in, fatigued, or tired as in, I’m tired of something in particular?”

Heather debated not telling her, but decided that no, everyone not talking to each other was only making this situation worse. She closed her diary and shoved it aside, then took a deep breath.

“Holy shit Veronica is  _ so _ fucking exhausting sometimes!” she exclaimed. “I love her, but  _ God _ do they know how to pull a fucking nerve.”

Chandler grimaced, not necessarily out of discomfort, but more out of surprise. “Geez, what did I miss?”

“Just…  _ ugh! _ ” She groaned loudly into her hands. “I mean, if they wanna stay mad at you, they  _ can, _ no offense, but I can’t help but wonder if they’re staying mad for the right reasons, and so I tried talking to her about it, then it just turned into a full blown argument and  _ uuuuugh. _ ” She flopped onto her bed and glared angrily at the ceiling. “I’m sorry to dump this on you, especially when it’s about your sort-of ex, but-”   


“Um, did we not say last night that we could be weak in front of one another?” Chandler questioned, gazing down at her. “And, Heather, you’re not arguing with her to get her to get back with me, are you?”   


“No!” Heather said, before wincing. “Though… if she could, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.”   


“Heather, as much as I would  _ love _ for Veronica to so much as look at me, I don’t want you guilting her into getting back with me. Our relationship just won’t be the same if you do that.” She took her hand and pulled her back up into a sitting position.

“I promise that’s not what I’m doing. I just… I know she wants to be with you again and I’m irritated by the thought that she could be dragging this out for longer than it needs to be dragged.”

“I don’t need you fighting my battles for me, Heather. She’s stubborn, not stupid. If she wants to forgive me, she will.” She frowned, resting a cheek on her palm. “I feel like I’m repeating your own advice back at you.”

“Maybe that’s good. Remind me of a time when things felt more black and white, please.” She tucked her knees under her chin. “It doesn’t help that now she’s mad at me for… reasons.”

“Reasons?”

Her head flopped forward, hiding her face behind her legs.

“You reasons.” She gestured to her. “Turns out, you should most definitely tell your girlfriends if you kissed another girl, even if the girl in question is sort of in the circle, still.”

She looked up to see Chandler dragging her hand down her face.

“You didn’t tell them we kissed?”

“I was going to!”

“ _ When? _ ”

“At… at a better time,” Heather murmured. “When all of this is over.”   


“You don’t know if it’s gonna be over.”

“No one knows the future, but I can sure as hell predict it.”

“Heather, the whole reason I’m not dating you right now is because I didn’t want to cause a rift between any of you,” she groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. Heather lowered her head guiltily.

“I know, but it’s hard when I don’t  _ want _ to take sides. Is this just my  _ life _ now?”

“You’re very free to ditch me.”

“You live with me.” She deadpanned at her. “Also, I don’t  _ want _ to, or I would have done it weeks ago.”

“I’m glad you don’t want to,” Chandler said. “And you make a good point.”

“I’m just gonna have to wait it out,” Duke grumbled. “Veronica will get over herself eventually.”

Chandler’s gaze grew solemn. “Don’t get my hopes up.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d rather prepare for the worst.”

“Being?”

“Being that she never talks to me again.”

“Heather…”

“It could very well happen,” she said. “So just… don’t convince me otherwise. And don’t fall out with her because of me.”

Heather sighed. “When I stop being mad at her, I’ll talk to her again.” She leaned back against the headboard, sliding down it. “You know, if you told them what was happening in your life, they would probably speak to you again.”

Chandler shifted uncomfortably. “I know that.”

“Then why don’t you? Cut this whole thing short.”

“If Veronica is going to talk to me, I want her to do it because she  _ wants _ to, not because she feels like she needs to. Otherwise… our relationship just won’t be the same. It’s not gonna get better, it’s gonna be forced.” Her eyes flickered up to her sadly from staring at her fidgeting hands. “You haven’t told them I’m technically homeless, have you?”

“No,” Heather replied. “But it’s hard to. I can tell Emmy really wants to know.”

“I might end up telling her, since she’s already kind of talking to me anyway. I think.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll see how it plays out - I can’t keep it a secret forever, but I can hold off for a little longer.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so.” She smiled. “I’m not sleeping in my car, and that’s all that matters.”

“No, you just have to sneak into my house and be  _ real _ quiet in my room now.”

“Better than making myself bleed.”

“You’re right.” She nodded to her bandaged hand. “Do you need to change that bandage, by the way?”

Chandler wiggled her fingers, rotating her wounded hand to observe the bandage. “I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll just take it off for now.”

She unwrapped her hand slowly, with Heather sitting up to get a better view of the wound as it became unravelled. The light stain on the inside of the bandage was the first thing she saw - it was nowhere near as gruesome as the first bandage she had worn, but the faint brown tint told Heather that the wound was far from healed, and still prone to opening up. Once Chandler had tossed the bandage in the trash, she opened up her hand to get a better look at the healing process. The scab was still dark red and painful looking, and was clearly healing slowly, but at least the scab had grown thicker, at least in most places.

“Will it leave a scar?” Chandler wondered. Heather grimaced.

“Probably.” Seeing that Chandler was staring a little too intensely at it, Heather gently rolled her hand back up and pushed it down, breaking her away from the view. “But it won’t hurt forever.”

Chandler’s lips curled up again. “Tch, barely hurts now.”

“Don’t lie. I know you cried when you got your ears pierced.”

Chandler gasped. “Well at least I didn’t nearly  _ faint. _ ”

“I have a phobia of needles!”

“Why didn’t you just get a  _ gun _ then?”

“Because we went to the same place and got our ears pierced  _ together. _ ”

“‘Twas an awful decision,” she said with a yawn. Heather rolled her eyes fondly, moving her diary off the bed to make room for her.

“Come on, we ought to sleep, it’s late.”

"Yeah, and we have to get up early to sneak me into your shower." She crawled up to the space next to her and tucked herself under the bed. Heather felt guilty for staring at her for a little bit too long, but she looked adorable, curled up and relaxed. It was rare seeing her in such a soft and vulnerable state; it used to be impossible to catch her like this. Now Heather got to see it every night, and as sweet as that thought was, the conflict going on between everyone only made it more difficult to handle.

Because what if Heather was right? What if Veronica really  _ was _ such a stubborn bitch that they'd never speak to Heather again? She knew she would have to take sides if that were the case, and…

And that was something she really didn't want to think about.

"Quit overthinking," Chandler scolded, thankfully snapping her out of her thoughts. Heather sighed, pushing everything out of mind as she turned around to switch the lamp off.

"Goodnight," she murmured into the darkness.

"Night."

* * *

“Oh, and you see him? The tall one with the fuzzy brown hair,” Emmy pointed to yet another figure in the distance. “That’s Alex.”

“I see.” Heather couldn’t see everyone’s faces too well - Emmy had picked a spot away from everyone else to do her warm-ups on the other side of the field, likely because she preferred to do stretches when she didn’t have prying eyes surrounding her. It was a sad thought, but at least she was able to talk to her in the meantime. “So, I know everyone’s faces now, but I just need to figure out how to execute this.”

“Just like all of our schemes, duh!” Emmy chirped, glancing up from the floor where she was busy doing push-ups. Heather was  _ sure _ she was only doing them to show off - she was warming up for  _ soccer, _ not arm lifting. Not that Heather was complaining. The way her muscles flexed each time she raised herself up was seriously giving her asexuality a run for it’s goddamn money.

That was an exaggeration, of course, but point being, Emmy was incredibly gorgeous, even, and somehow  _ especially, _ when she had beads of sweat rolling down her tawny skin. Maybe it was because she knew full well that those arms could swipe her off her feet, which was an appealing thought on its own, but also helped build her confidence a little.

“Things are different now. We’re not targeting the powerless anymore - we’re targeting people with status,” she said. “We can’t spread rumours about people who have the power to shoot it down - we have to work differently.”

Emmy hopped back up onto her feet, walking over to where Heather sat on the bleachers to grab her water bottle.

“How do we do that?”

“Well, I’ve had a week to think about it, and I came up with an idea,” Heather stated. “We don’t start the rumours - in fact, the complete opposite of us. Somebody, or several people, further down the food chain start it.”

Emmy gazed at her curiously. “I’m listening.”

“Think about it. It’s the popular kids who spread rumours about the losers, what if we flip that on its head? It’ll be far more believable to hear gossip from the mouths of people whose business isn’t to spread gossip.”

“Ooooh.” Emmy nodded. “I see what you mean. But who would do it? Like you just said, it isn’t their business to start rumours.”

“Well, I considered asking Martha and Betty, but Martha would never be able to do something callous, even to people who deserve it, and while Betty’s a great candidate, she kinda has associations with me, so it could still be seen as suspicious.” She sighed, resting a cheek on her palm. “And I’d rather not threaten the first geek I see walking down the hallways to do it, because they could let the lie spill.”

“Hmmm. Do we know anyone else that aren’t, well, popular?”

“There’s JD, but he’s trying to stay out of transphobic bullshit right now, so I would rather not dump it on him,” she said. “Also, he’s “dating” Heather, and she’s very clearly associated with me.”

“True…” Emmy placed her foot on a high step of the bleachers to stretch it out. Heather was still sure she was just showing off. “Then who’s left?”

“Heather!”

The sound of both of their names - but more specifically Emmy’s - turned their attention to the bleachers sitting perpendicular to their own. Several levels up stood Hale and Diego, more specifically, Hale  _ holding _ Diego as if he were as light as a pet cat. He was certainly holding him like you would a cat, anyway.

“Diego, what are you doing?” Emmy called back, sauntering towards those bleachers.

“Watch this! Hale’s gonna throw me off!”

“He’s  _ what? _ ”

They got no further reply, only Hale craning his arms back, preparing for the inevitable tossing of Diego into the air. Heather was both fascinated and terrified - why were boys like this? Emmy just let out a short-lived scream as she watched Diego fly, before landing on his feet for maybe half a second before rolling forward. It was surprisingly smooth, and though it took him a moment to get back onto his feet again, he didn’t look hurt. He was actually smiling proudly, fists in the air as he cheered.

“Hell yeah! Did you see that?”

“I did. I’m impressed, but also  _ why? _ ” Emmy made her way over to him, and Heather decided to hop down from her seat and follow.

“Why not?”

“Because you might fall wrong and break something,” Emmy said. Diego blew a raspberry.

“You live or you lose, that’s how it goes.”

“How does one lose at life?” Heather asked. It was like he hadn’t noticed she was there, or at least, hadn’t expected her to talk, because he seemed surprised by her presence.

“Dying.”

“Makes sense.”

“Oh! Heather, have you properly met Hale and Diego?” Emmy chipped excitedly. Heather shook her head.

“Not really. Hi.”

“Hello! Heather talks about you all the time!” Diego said with a speedy wave. Hale sauntered up behind him silently, brushing his black dreads out of his face.

“Hey. I’m Hale, nice to meet you.”

“Hey. You’re the two only decent guys on the soccer team, right?” She gestured to them both. “Thanks for not being like the rest of them - Heather would have a much harder time without you two.”

“Aw, it’s no big deal! The guys give us a hard time too,” Diego said.

“How come?”

“Well, everyone calls me weird, and also I’m small, which isn’t a super desirable trait in sports,” he replied.

“What about you?” She looked up to Hale, who most definitely wasn’t small. He was incredibly tall, actually, as well as bulky.

“Uh, I’m gay,” he said with a shrug. “I mean, they don’t  _ know _ that, but apparently I make it obvious.”

“It’s because you respect women, which is ironic because you don’t date them.”

Heather was a little taken aback. No, she wasn’t surprised by him being gay - she’d heard Emmy mention the rumours before. It was more that she had never witnessed a student come out so casually and so  _ soon _ after meeting her.

“I don’t need to date someone to respect them,” Hale retorted with an eye roll.

“You know what I mean. The other guys are shitty to Heather.”

“Well…” Emmy looked like she was about to protest, but her raised finger fell in defeat. “Okay, yeah, they are.”

“But it’s cool, because we got each other’s backs and we know we’re actually good at this sport!” Diego punched Emmy lightly on the arm. “You scored a winning shot on your first proper game - that’ll be a story to tell long after you graduate!”

Emmy giggled. “It wasn’t  _ that _ impressive.”

“Hey, even the rest of the team praised you for it, cut yourself some slack,” Hale said.

“Yeah, Heather, it was amazing, so shut up.” She rested her arm on her shoulder, and Emmy simply blushed. She was tempted to press a kiss against her cheek, but of course, there were people present.

Then again, both of the people in question were clearly not the same small-minded bigots the rest of the school could be described as, and the rest of the class were still in the distance as well as at an angle where they wouldn’t be able to see her touch Emmy’s cheek, so…

“Did you come out to them?” she whispered to her. Emmy glanced at her curiously.

“Yes? It came up when Hale said he was-”

She cut her off with a peck on the lips. Emmy squeaked in surprise, her voice high pitched and adorable, while Heather just gazed at her smugly before looking back at Hale and Diego to search their reactions. Hale seemed surprised, but in a good way with how the corners of his mouth were quirking up, while Diego just let out a loud gasp.

“Heather! You didn’t tell us you were dating Heather!” he exclaimed, luckily not loud enough for the whole field to hear.

“I- I didn’t want to out her!” she said. “That would have been rude.”

“Em, I’m already openly a trans woman, what’s telling the boys I’m a lesbian gonna do?” She then glimpsed at them and smirked. “An asexual lesbian, to be exact.”

“I wasn’t sure!"

“I appreciate it, but it’s fine, honestly.”

“Woah,  _ two _ lesbian Heathers?” Diego stared at them in amazement. “Who woulda thought, with their reputation and whatnot?” He gestured to them while looking at Hale, who just shrugged silently. Part of Heather was tempted to raise his astonishment even more by confessing that all three of them were gay in some way, but as Emmy had just stated, that would be rude.

“See, I was always the most intimidated by her,” Hale said, pointing to her. “She’s actually really cool.”

“Me?” Heather snickered in amusement. “Not Heather? Chandler, to be specific.”

“I mean, she’s scary, but I dunno, you were always quieter, and I find that a lot more scary than someone as loud and extroverted as her. With you, no one really knows what you’re thinkin’.”

“Huh.” Heather had never considered her lingering shyness as intimidating at all, but it was good to know that even during the years where she depended on Chandler to speak for her, she may have still been respected, or at least feared, in some way after all. “I do silently judge a lot of people.”

“Oh! What are you judging about me right now? Be brutally honest!” Diego exclaimed, hopping over to stand right in front of her. Was it slightly embarrassing that, despite being so small, he still had to look down at her? Maybe.

“Alright. I think you’re loud and you most definitely don’t know when to stop talking.”

“She’s  _ good. _ ” He squinted at her. “Now, do you think I’m  _ annoying _ because of that?”

“Don’t answer that, Heather,” Emmy said. “He has ADHD, you’ll be insulting me too.”

“I was going to say no, because I’ve seen how annoying people can  _ actually _ be.”  _ You know, when they try and convince themselves they’re a good person by doing nothing but ditching their girlfriend they apparently want to forgive oh-so badly. _

Interrupting her thoughts and their conversation was the whistle being blown by Garrett across the field, presumably signaling that warm-ups were over and that they’d be doing some actual training.

“Oh, we better join the others.” Emmy looked back to Heather sadly. “I’ll have to go.”

“That’s alright. I better go do some actual yearbook committee work,” she said with a smile. She would have kissed her farewell, but eyes were on them now, waiting for them to make their way over, and it would have been far too risky, if not downright stupid.

“It was nice meeting you, Heather,” Hale said.

“Yeah! You’re really cool!” Diego agreed.

“You too. Good luck training,” she said, turning around. As she began to make her way back to where she had left her bag on the bleachers, somebody tapped her.

“Hey, um, Heather?”

She turned back around and saw Diego - only him, this time. Emmy and Hale were already half way across the field.

“Yeah?”

“I just… wanted to thank you,” he said, suddenly sheepish about his words. Heather raised a brow, curious.

“Thank me? For what?”

“For… being inspiring, I suppose?” He shrugged. “Look, I can tell you’re not in a position you wanna be in, with being openly trans and all, but even so, the way you’ve handled it means a lot to me.”

She gave a huff of laughter, still confused. “Why?”

“Well, um, okay uh, so I’m not trans, necessarily, but I am intersex,” he said quietly. “I have a tough relationship with gender, I still don’t really know where I stand, but that’s beside the point-”

“Wait,” she cut in, amazed. “You’re- you’re intersex?”

“Yeah, uh, I dunno if you know what that means, not many people do-”

“No, no, it’s that…  _ I’m _ intersex.”

Diego widened his eyes. “You are?”

“Yeah, I- I was assigned male at birth, that’s why I’m trans. But I’m intersex too,” she said, a sense of belonging flooding through her. “I… I’ve never met any other intersex person. I thought I never would.”

“Me neither!” Diego was jittering with excitement. “That’s… that’s crazy!”

“Yeah, it is,” she laughed.

“Well, either way, as a fellow intersex queer person of colour,” he held out his hand, “I wanted to thank you for… being really strong. Even if I’m not openly queer, it makes me feel empowered, and just a lot more safe. And proud - to be me, I mean. Am I making sense?”

“Plenty,” Heather said with a smile. “And it means a lot that… I’m not alone either.”

Diego gave an earnest smile, a silent shared sense of unity falling between the two of them, before it was interrupted by another harsh whistle blow.

“Diego! We’re waiting on you!” Garrett called. “Come on, coach is gonna be mad.”   


“Coming!” he called. “See you round, Heather. Also, you and Heather are adorable together,” he quickly said.

“See you,” she said, watching him turn around. Though, as she watched him begin to run, the newfound alliance they had formed gave her an idea, returning back to the conversation she had been having with Heather before.

“Hey, Diego?”

He skidded to a halt and glanced back to her.

“Would you like to do a favour for me?” she asked with an impish grin. He blinked, clearly intrigued.

“Of course. What is it?”

“It’s…” She glanced at the impatient looking class staring at them both. “Meet me here after practice, I’ll tell you then. And don’t tell anyone - except for Hale. You can bring him if you like.”

“I’m excited to find out what this is,” he commented.

“Hopefully you won’t be disappointed,” Heather said.

“ _ Diego! _ Quit flirting with the she-man!” Garrett barked. Heather turned to glare at him, only to see Hale walking over to him and bashing the back of his head with his palm. Nothing too hard, but it definitely hurt, by how he cradled the area that had been hit.

“Fucking hell, Hale!” he scolded.

“Quit being a dick,” Hale said, his voice almost inaudible to Heather from where she stood. She just chuckled as she watched Garrett mutter something under his breath, something that made Hale roll his eyes. She caught Heather’s eye too, who just gave her an apologetic look and mouthed a,  _ “Sorry,” _ to which she just shook her head and made a dismissive gesture.

Clearly the insults weren’t so bothersome today, not when her ability to scheme was still as strong as ever.

* * *

Veronica hadn’t seen Heather all day. In fact, they hadn’t seen anyone but Martha and Betty, who they ended up telling about the argument they had had with Heather the previous day. They seemed sympathetic, but couldn’t show it for very long, because they had been together for about five minutes before the bell rang. Perhaps if Veronica had actually met up with them at lunch instead of sitting by themselves in a secluded area of school, they would’ve gotten more comfort as well as some answers out of Betty.

Heather’s words had been swirling around their head all day, though. They had the previous night too, and it had led to her insomnia coming back with a vengeance. Now, at the end of the school day, they sat on the wall that separated the school parking lot and the road and pavement that ran alongside it. The cigarette in their mouth was the only thing keeping them calm, rather than feeling ill with anxiety, and though they knew that wasn’t healthy for their lungs, they weren’t particularly interested in seeking long-term solutions right now.

“Hey, Ronnie.”

The sudden voice made them jump, though they relaxed upon seeing Mara standing just behind them, a cautious smile adorning her face.

“Mmm. Hi,” they said through gritted teeth, still holding the cigarette in their mouth. Smoke escaped on their breath as they spoke, and it was then that Mara’s smile dropped and she covered her mouth and nose.

“Ack! I didn’t realise you were smoking!”

“Shit- sorry, I forgot you don’t like it-” Veronica panicked as Heather stumbled away, trying to block out the smell and taste of smoke, and quickly dropped the cigarette onto the floor and crushed it. “Okay, it’s gone, no smoke left.”

Heather hesitantly removed her hands from her face, sniffing to check that it was most definitely gone, before sighing with relief.

“Hey, why were you  _ smoking? _ ” she then scolded, giving them a look.

“I’m stressed.”

“You have asthma.”

“I’m not smoking as frequently!” Veronica protested. “Promise - I’m working on it.”

“Alright.” Heather floated over and sat down on the wall next to them. There was a brief silence that fell on them, until Heather eventually spoke. Veronica was grateful that she spoke first - they had no idea what to say right now. They knew full well that she had spoken to Duke about their argument, and they worried about her perhaps taking sides.

“So, how are you feeling?”

“Um…” Veronica shrugged. “Dunno, I have a lot on my mind.”

“I see,” Heather murmured. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No… not right now,” Veronica sighed. “I will soon, but I need some time to think."

“That’s alright.” Heather turned around to make her whole body face them. “We can talk about something else then.”

“Such as?”

“Anything.” She leaned forward and gazed at her with flattering interest. “Tell me something about yourself.”

“Hm?”

“Anything I don’t know about you - something completely random.”

“Oh, um, okay.” Veronica’s head raced to think of ideas. “Uh, well, I don’t know my heritage? On my mom’s side.”

“Oh?”

“So, both of my parents are Romanian, but my mom was adopted. She knows racially she’s likely Latina, but she doesn’t know the specifics, and neither do I.” They shrugged. “At least I know my dad’s side? He’s Portugese.”

“I never knew you were Latina! Latino?”

“Hm. Gendered language doesn’t fit me, huh?”

“Either way.”

“Now tell me something about you.”

“Oh! Okay, um… what don’t you know about me…” She hummed, swaying back and forth. “Oh! I’ve never shown you my birthmark.”

Veronica snickered. “Is it appropriate to show in public?”

“It’s not anywhere explicit! It’s in my eye.”

“Your… your eye?”

“Yeah! Look.” She held her bangs back to give Veronica a clear view of her right eye and pulled them by the collar so they were less than an inch away. They were tempted to close the gap, but they were more intrigued by the thought of a birthmark being in somebody’s  _ eye. _

“Where am I looking?”

“Well, it’s a little hard to see since my eyes are quite dark, but it looks like it’s attached to my pupil, I suppose?” She widened her eyes so that they could get a better look. “Do you see it?”

“I… no…” They searched for anything off, but her hazel gaze was just too dark for Veronica to really decipher much from it. So they tilted her head up slightly to gain better lighting, and when the sun caught her speckled irises, they saw a dark mark against the lighter copper spots, darker than the rest of her russet gaze. It almost looked like someone took a chunk out of her pupil and placed it right next to it, and when her eyes flickered a little, they could see it stayed in place with the rest of the eye.

“Oh, is that it?” They squinted further, and saw that it was definitely a black mark, not brown. “I see it! That’s so weird.”

“I know.” Heather moved back and let her bangs flop over her face, though her eye still remained visible, as it tended to do these days.

“I mean that in a good way - I didn’t know you could get birthmarks in your eyes.”

“You can! It’s pretty…” Her voice suddenly trailed off as her eye caught something from somewhere behind Veronica. “Pretty neat…” She tried to continue, but whatever she was looking at distracted her a little too much. Veronica frowned, following her gaze in confusion.

“What are you looking at?”

Their eyes landed on a car - an expensive-looking one, one that they felt like they had seen before, but couldn’t quite put their finger on where. It pulled up not too far away from them on the side of the road, and once the lights switched off and engine went silent, out stepped two unrecognisable figures. Though they’d never seen them before, though, something was oddly familiar about them. A woman with dark, straight auburn hair stepped out in a tight polka-dotted dress, long sleeves flowing behind her wrists elegantly, at least, when they were still. The way she walked was snappy and by no means graceful, making every time her heels would touch the ground piercing on the ear drums. The man accompanying her was dressed smartly, with a black blazer and button-up shirt that was neatly tucked into his pants. His hair was balding, but what was left was coated in gel and shone like plastic.

Perhaps Veronica was rude for staring, but it wasn’t like the pair was innocent either, since they were both looking in their direction. The woman said something to the man - they assumed her husband - before walking over to them with a quick pace.

“I- hello?” It was Heather who spoke up, tensing up and on high alert. Though she seemed intimidated, her tone was vaguely friendly, like she knew these people well enough to not introduce herself.

“Heather - it’s a good thing we bumped into you,” the woman sighed in relief. “I thought we’d have to scavenge the whole school.”

“Huh- what are you doing here?” Heather asked, shifting uncomfortably.

“Surely you’d know,” the woman rolled her eyes in a patronizing way that was, again, familiar, but with a sickly tinge. Something was off about these two people, and Veronica couldn’t figure out what. “I’d figure Heather would have told you.”   


“Told me... what?” Heather slowly asked. “We, um, we haven’t spoken much lately.”

“What?” The woman groaned in exasperation. “You two are practically inseparable. How is it we catch you on the day you’re not  _ talking? _ ”

“I- I might be able to help!” Heather stammered. “What are you here for?”

Veronica was starting to get a vague idea of who these people were, but they needed to get confirmation.

“Sorry, um, who are you both? Can I help in any way?” they spoke up, snatching both of their attention. They seemed to silently judge them by simply looking in their direction, but regardless, the woman replied.

“Sorry, how rude of us,” she said, something disingenuous in her tone. “We’re here for our daughter. Do you know her?”

“Who’s your daughter?”

“Heather Chandler.”

_ Oh. _ They stared back into Heather’s mother’s eye, doing their utmost best to remain calm, to not tear into her flimsy polite facade and find the monster hiding inside, and perhaps punch her in the face while they were at it. “Yeah, I know her. For quite some time, actually - I’m Veronica, nice to meet you.” They smiled at them both with a faux smile that threatened theirs as they held out a hand for them to shake. Chandler’s father turned his nose up at it, while her mother hesitantly took it, though the faltering smile was a give-away that she was put off by it, at the very least.

“Heather hasn’t mentioned you,” her mother said dryly.

“Huh. Strange. I’m a good… associate of hers.”

“Oh. Good, then you can help us,” her mother said. “Heather - she’s missing. Well, not  _ missing, _ but we had a disagreement the other day, and she kind of…  _ left. _ ”

“Left?” As calm as Veronica was trying to be, it was difficult when this… new information was being dropped on them. “What do you mean?”

“She left the house,” her father said bluntly. “She packed up and left with her friend, Heather. I assume you know her too.”

“We’re sure she’s coming back, to clarify,” her mother added. “She’s just being a bit hysterical right now. You know how emotional she can be, surely.”

It took everything Veronica had to not reach up and slap her foundation off of her boney face. It seems Heather was having similar struggles, since she was clenching her fists by her sides, short nails digging into the bricks of the wall. Veronica imagined that hurt.

“So, she’s not… living with you?” Heather questioned.

“No, but we would rather she  _ would, _ and as she hasn’t been back in the past few days like we thought she would… we thought we’d come and find  _ her. _ ”

“I see.” Veronica had no idea how to unpack all of that. They knew full well that something was wrong, and that whatever Heather had ran from, it wasn’t anything good. Maybe it wasn’t even anything specific, maybe she just got sick of their bullshit and moved out, but either way, they pushed all the baggage they had towards her in favour of one motivation.

“I don’t know if she’s even still at school,” Heather said nervously.

“She is. I see her car.” Her father pointed across the parking lot, and Veronica followed his finger to see that, yes, Chandler’s red Porsche was still there. Shit.

“Oh, you know what she’ll be doing then?” Veronica said, grinning in the most friendly manner she could while being driven by pure spite. “Catching up on the work she missed during her suspension. Not sure what classes, though. You can try English, perhaps?”  _ She definitely won’t be catching up on that - she’s done all the work. _ “Yeah, English. There’s a lot of essays she needs to do.”

“Oh. Well, thank you,” her mother said, seeming genuinely grateful, and almost fooling Veronica for being a decent person for a split second. “But we don’t know our way around the school and we would rather not miss her. Do you mind taking us there?”

“Ah- well, I’d love to, but my parents will be here to pick me up soon.”

“They will?” Heather looked at her skeptically. They grimaced at her for a moment.

“ _ Yes. _ They will. I’m going to the mall with them, remember?”

The clueless look on Heather’s expression filled Veronica with dread - perhaps they shouldn’t have depended on her picking up on such vague signals for this plan to work. Thankfully, though, they slowly nodded.

“Right - I thought you were getting the bus there.” She still seemed confused, but was going along with it regardless.

“You’re not going anywhere though,” Veronica said. “You could go and look around with them.”

“I could?”

Veronica stared at her almost desperately.

“I mean, I think I have time, yeah.”

“That would be very useful, thank you,” her mother said with relief. “Care to show us the way around?” She held out her arm and gestured for her to go first. Heather, though clearly uncomfortable with how stiff her movements were, offered a polite smile and slipped off the wall, leading them away. Veronica gave a sweet little wave as they left, which Heather’s mother actually returned, as if now that they had been useful to them in some way, she had a reason to like her.

Veronica, however, had no reason to like either of them. Quite the opposite, in fact.

And so, once they were a good distance away, almost out of view, they turned to their car. That pretty, shiny vehicle that most definitely cost a fortune. Not a single dent or scratch or scrape.

Wouldn’t it be unfortunate, they thought as they pulled out their biggest, sharpest key from their pocket, holding it between their fingers…

...If something awful happened to it?

* * *

_ Shit shit shit shit. _

Heather had literally no idea what was happening. She was simply pulled into something that was most definitely a scheme, but what schemes she had no idea. All she knew is that she was aimlessly leading Chandler’s parents around the school, hoping that she wouldn’t actually cross paths with Chandler on the way.

“So, um, English rooms are just this way - there are stairs though.” She never really knew how to communicate with Heather’s parents. She knew they weren’t fond of her - they always thought she was strange as a child and annoying as a teen. Now she was technically an adult, she wondered what their mood would be next.

“Goodness, shouldn’t have worn heels,” she heard Mrs. Chandler huff. Heather debated telling them to wait at the bottom of the staircase when they got there, just in case Heather  _ was _ up there, but seeing a familiar face when she rounded a corner interrupted her panicked thoughts. She watched her slip into the bathroom, just in time to be missed by Chandler’s parents, and as she walked past the bathroom door, she halted.

“I’ll just go in here first!” she announced. “She likes to fix her makeup up in here a lot, also I need the bathroom anyway.”

Heather’s mother sighed impatiently. “Alright, hurry it up though.”

And so Heather darted into the bathroom, and standing in front of the mirror, busy painting lipgloss on her lips, was Heather Duke.

“Heather!” she whisper-yelled. Duke snapped her head to her in surprise.

“Jesus, you scared me,” she said, returning her attention to the mirror. “What’s up?”   


“I have a huge dilemma and I have no idea what to do.”

“Spill.”

“Heather’s parents are following me around the school because they’re looking for her.”

Duke paused, slowly turning back towards her, now also looking panicked.

“Run that by me again.”

“Parents. Heather’s. Outside the bathroom right now, waiting for me. What do I do? What’s even  _ happening? _ ”

“How- how did you get yourself into this situation, exactly?”

“Veronica told me to do it!”

“Huh?”

“I don’t know! I think he’s planning something, but I don’t know what, because he couldn’t tell me when Heather’s parents were  _ right there, _ so now I have to act like I’m looking for Heather? Or maybe I’m supposed to be, I didn’t really understand what they-”

“Okay, even if that’s what they did want, which I imagine it isn’t, do  _ not _ go looking for Heather,” Duke told her sternly. “I’ll be brief - she doesn’t want me sharing what’s happening with her homelife right now, but I can say it isn’t good, and I don’t want her being dragged back there.”   


“Alright. I- I won’t.” As worried as she became for Heather in that moment, she knew she had to push it down, just for now. “But, what do I do?”

“I know where she is - she’s in the student room with Peter, they’re working on updating student displays around the school. Just avoid going there, I’ll go find her and we’ll figure something out. You just keep them in places where she doesn’t go.”

“Alright. I’m taking them to the English rooms now. Don’t know if they’re going to climb all those steps though.”

“That’s fine. Just keep them away."

“Alright. I better go back out before they get suspicious.”

“Good luck. And don’t let them see me either - they know she’s living with me.”

“Noted.” She gave her a wave before returning back outside, where her parents waited on the other side of the corridor, seemingly eyeing the state of the school’s peeling paint on the ceiling.

“Ah, there you are.” Her mother seemed irritated, probably because she’d taken a while, but she could hardly feel guilty for it.

“Sorry about that - girl problems.”

Mrs. Chandler’s face scrunched up in disgust, while Mr. Chandler said nothing, only looked away. Heavens knows why, she’d said the least explicit thing she could think of, but anyhow.

“So, English rooms,” she said, leading them away from the bathroom. “Right this way.”

On her way down the hallway, she stole one last glimpse at the bathrooms behind them, and saw Duke quietly stepping out of the bathrooms, checking that they were gone, before darting in the opposite direction.

* * *

“Peter?"

Him and Heather had been working in almost total silence this whole time, which wasn’t ideal, since this job required a fair amount of communication. That had been how they had always worked, at least, ever since they had broken up well over a year ago.

“Mhmm?” It wasn’t that Peter was uncomfortable around her - he had been at first, sad, even - but these days he seemed perfectly chill around her. But she knew there was unresolved tension, and she knew Peter knew that too.

“Um... “ Heather had spoken without really thinking. It had been on her mind for a little while that she should probably talk to him about what happened, but now that she had the chance, she had no idea where to start without sounding pathetic. Unless, of course, she  _ needed _ to sound pathetic. Perhaps that was the whole point - this was supposed to be a humble moment for her. “I just thought I should apologise.”

Peter looked up from his work, looking like he had just hallucinated.

“Huh?”

“I’m apologising,” she repeated. “For the way I treated you when we dated. I wasn’t nice.” When she got no response, she sighed. “Please don’t make me repeat any of that, it was hard enough saying it.”

“No, I heard you loud and clear,” Peter said, still amazed by his own ears. “And… who said you should apologise?”

“Me. I did. I dropped you out of nowhere and I feel bad about it. Can a girl not feel guilty?” She rolled her eyes. “I just wanted to tell you it had nothing to do with you, contrary to what I said. I wasn’t ready to settle down with a  _ nice _ boyfriend - I wanted to be adventurous with, well, um, my body, let’s just say.”

“And… I didn’t give you that,” he murmured sheepishly.

“That’s not a bad thing. It’s a me thing, honest,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t know what happened. I did like you, but… I think my  _ physical _ feelings move a lot quicker than my romantic ones, if that makes sense.” She shrugged. “Probably doesn’t. What I’m saying is, we just wanted different things, and I should have just said  _ that _ instead of telling you you weren’t enough for me.”

“Oh.” Peter seemed conflicted. He was always a respectable person, he never showed any disdain towards her, even if he should have. She could tell a lot of buried emotions were coming up now, and he was debating whether or not he should let them out. “I… appreciate hearing that.”

“It’s… whatever. If it makes you feel better, you’re quite possibly the nicest guy I’ve ever dated. The rest of them have been…” She shuddered. “Absolute  _ animals. _ ”

“I am?”

“Yeah. You actually cared about what I wanted… and the problem was, it was  _ me _ who was overstepping boundaries in our relationship.” She grew a little saddened by that. “I’m used to being on the receiving end of that, so I should have never put you in that position.”

“Heather, no, you never pressured me!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I could tell you  _ wanted _ to do certain things that I wasn’t ready for, and didn’t want to do things  _ I _ wanted to do, but it’s not like you kept asking. You just grew distant and broke it up soon after when you realised we wanted different things! That’s fine, it happens.”

“Alright.” Heather slowly nodded. “So, are we good?”

“I kinda thought we were always good.”

“Yeah, well, now are we  _ officially  _ good?”

“Sure.” Peter smiled at her, before a thought seemed to occur to him. “This isn’t you… planning on asking me out again, is it?”

Though Heather knew Peter wasn’t like so many other guys and didn’t view the slightest bit of human decency as flirting, she still grew alert and scowled.

“Am I not allowed to apologise without wanting a fuck?”

“Huh? No! No, that’s not- I would have said no if that’s what you were doing.”

Heather relaxed, “Alright, that’s fine. Sorry.”

“No, I get it. Guys read signals wrong all the time.”

“They do.” Then Heather realised something. “Hey wait, why would you have said  _ no? _ ”

Peter froze. “Nothing personal! I’m just- uh- I’m taken.”

“ _ Oh, _ I see.”

“Also, aren’t you taken too?”

_ No? Yes? It’s complicated. _ “Yeah, I am. I was just wondering what was so  _ unappealing _ about me,” she said in a playful tone. “But hm. Who’s the lucky lady, huh?”

Peter seemed to stammer, shifting in his seat nervously.

“Uh, no one.”

“Clearly it’s not no one.” She leaned across the table, intrigued. “Do I know them? I probably know them, I know a lot of people.”

“Uh, well…” It was then he stopped to think, like something obvious just occurred to him. “Hey, Heather?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re… you’re still friends with Heather, aren’t you? Duke?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Just wondering,” he murmured. “And, in your speech, you spoke about gay panic and all that stuff…”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m, for no reason in particular, asking if you support the gay community.”

Heather stared at him for a long moment. She probably shouldn’t have, because it definitely just made him more anxious, but she was just a little stunned.

“You have  _ no _ idea,” was her response.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Okay, well, then I guess I’m okay to tell you I’m not dating a girl,” he said, before looking back up at her. “I’m not trying to say you were my beard, by the way! You weren’t - I do like girls.”

“Uh-huh?”

“But, uh, yeah, I kinda don’t care about the gender of the person I date, I just go for it.”

Heather raised a brow in intrigue. “So, you’re pansexual?”

“I… yeah. You’ve heard of that?”

“Yeah. I’m pansexual.”

“ _ What? _ ”

As chill as she was being, getting that off her chest to someone outside of her circle without the fear of being bullied was… exhilarating, as was the thought of someone else using the same label as her.

“Yeah, I like women, men and whatever. The journey to discovering that was  _ interesting, _ to say the least.” She huffed in amusement as she reminisced on the many months of denial she endured.

“That’s, uh, that’s really cool, Heather,” Peter said, still flabbergasted. “I… never expected that from you.”

“Yes, well, if you ever need to get anyone off your back, just in case you’re ever caught with your mystery boyfriend, come to me. Or Heather. We can handle it.”

Peter looked like he was going to thank her, but the sound of the door swinging open violently.

“Heather!” Duke exclaimed, panting in the doorway. She stared at her, having been startled by her entry.

“Heather? I’m almost done here, Peter and I were just going to-”

“We need to leave. Now.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain in a sec, but we need to go.”

“But I can’t leave this work to Peter,” she grunted, looking back to him. He just shrugged.

“Nah, it’s fine, there isn’t much left to do. Besides, I had to do work by myself during the two weeks you were gone.”

“Hm. Fair enough.” She stood up from her chair and said goodbye just in time before she was dragged out of the room by the sleeve. “Heather, Jesus, slow down, what-”

“Your parents are here.”

She froze, her heart dropping into a pit of dread. “What?”

“They’re looking for you - we need to go.”

“They’re  _ looking for me? _ ”

“Yes. Heather’s “searching” for you with them - she’s actually leading them away from you, but I don’t know how long she’ll be able to stall them for. We best go now.”

“Can’t we just hide until they leave?”

“Isn’t your car in the parking lot? They’re gonna know you’re here.”

“Shit.” She bit her lip. “I… have stuff I need to get out of my locker.”

“Can’t it wait?”

“No, it’s food for later so we don’t have to halve your dinner between us. And also homework, I guess.”

“Shit. Okay, Heather took them to the English rooms-”

“Goddammit.”

“-And your locker is near that section of the school, isn’t it?”

“You pass it on the way back from there, yes.”

“Alright, let’s be quick.”

And so they ran, taking the quickest route to the lockers. The school was almost like a figure of eight in its structure, with one end trailing off to the less organised parts of the school, and it was that corridor that linked the two parts of the building where her locker was. It was also that corridor that led to the block where her English rooms were.

“How did Mac end up guiding them around the school?” Heather asked as the speed-walked up the hallway.

“Dunno - something to do with Veronica telling her to.”

“What?” She shot her a quizzical look. “Why would she-”

“I don’t know! Heather didn’t have much time to explain, we’ll ask all about it later.”

They rounded the final corner that would lead to the hallway with her locker and, thankfully, the hallway was empty. Heather fumbled with her keys, her hands sweating and trembling slightly from the idea of crossing paths with her parents making her feel nauseous in the stomach. It meant she took longer to slide her key in the slot, but she eventually did it. She grabbed her bag and stuffed all the textbooks and worksheets she needed, scrunching a lot of them in the process with how messily she shoved them in there, and just as she managed to shove the final textbook in her bag, she heard clacking of heels that sounds far too familiar, from all those times she listened out to how her parents would walk up the stairs, and learn how different they sounded when doing so.

“ _ Shit! _ ” she hissed, slamming her locker shut a little too loud, before grabbing Duke’s hand and pulling her to the closest room, which was luckily an empty classroom. Thankfully it wasn’t locked.

She and Duke both peered through the thin window on the door, listening to the heels growing louder, and sure enough, she had been right. Her parents glided past, with Mac trailing behind them nervously. Just the sight of them made her stomach churn in a way that it had never done before.

And yet, despite the anxiety, part of her was still… touched that they had come for her, and so soon at that. If they were gonna look for her, she would have expected they’d take longer than a few days.

Once they were sure to be a long ways down the corridor, Heather and Heather hesitantly stepped back into the hallway as quietly as theycould, and as they did, Mac just so happened to look over her shoulder and spot them, her eyes widening. She grimaced and spun around, walking backwards to quickly sign,

_ “They want to wait by the entrance!” _

She managed to communicate that just before they disappeared behind the corner, and Heather immediately deflated.

“What did she say?” Duke asked.

“They’re going to wait by the entrance,” she murmured.

“So? We’ll leave through a fire exit!”

“ _ What _ fire exit? They lock all the doors by now because if there’s a fire, they just expect leftover students to be able to run to the main entrance!” 

Duke frowned. “So… what do we…”

“I don’t know.” She fell against the wall. “Why are they even here?”

“To get you?”

“Yes, but,  _ why? _ ” She bit the tips of her nails. “I would have thought they’d be happier without me burdening them, but… do you think maybe they cared enough to come and find me?” She felt sick for just suggesting that, but she couldn’t help but feel like that could be it.

“Heather, even if that’s why they’ve come here, who cares? They should have never treated you like shit to begin with - then you wouldn’t have moved out.”

“Yeah, but… they came a lot sooner than I thought they would.”

“So?”

She shrugged, crossing her arms tightly. “I dunno. Maybe they care, even if it’s not enough, it’s more than I thought they did.”

Duke’s gaze softened. “Heather, it’s still not enough. You shouldn’t settle for love, you should look for what you deserve. Besides…” She sighed. “Can you think of another reason why they might have come looking for you?”

Heather stopped to think, trying to think what the hell could have motivated them to look for her other than unconditional love. Maybe they just didn’t want her to starve, maybe they came to ask her for something, not to take her home. Maybe it was so the rest of her family wouldn’t find out, but it’s not like she sees her family often anyway, other than during Christmas and…

“Oh.” Her shoulders slumped. “It’s my grandmother’s 90th birthday… they’re going to want to meet up with the whole family and… it’ll be weird if I’m not there.”

“You sound disappointed.”

Heather’s expression soured. “I was sort of hoping they actually cared enough to come and get me.”

“Oh, Heather…”

“It’s  _ fine. _ ”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. I guess.” She shrugged bitterly. “Does it matter? Unless we can find an open fire escape, we have to walk right into them.”

“We could run past them, jump in the car and make a break for it.”

“They could jump in the car and follow us, then they find your house and have a  _ word _ with your parents. It’ll all be over.”

They both fell silent, trying to think of what to do, before heavy thumping sounded throughout the hallway again. Duke grew alert, thinking that it could be her parents again, but Heather knew her parents well enough to know that they didn’t walk so fast. Turning the corner was in fact, two different familiar faces, who were much more of a relief to see.

“Oh, hey-o, Heathers alert,” Betty announced as she walked towards them. “Didn’t know I could see them in person after school hours.”

“Are you both okay?” Martha seemed to be more observant in their saddened appearances and gave them a concerned look.

“Not really,” Heather muttered. “But thanks for asking.”

“What’s up?” Betty asked.

Heather debated telling them or just brushing it off, but hey, she could consider them…  _ acquaintances _ at this point. She could give them a less detailed version.

“Hm. Do you want a brief summary?” she asked. Betty seemed intrigued.

“Shoot.”

“So, a few days ago I ditched my parents for… reasons… and now they’re in the school looking for me,” she said. “We were about to make a break for it, but they’re waiting by the entrance so we have no way out without bumping into them.”

“You ditched your parents?” Martha widened her eyes. “So, like JD?”   


“Pretty much. Ain’t that swell.”

“That sounds shit,” Betty said with a frown. “Do you need our help?”

Heather blinked, surprised. “You’d wanna help?”

“Sure. You helped JD escape his dad, we can help you escape your parents.” Betty placed a hand on Martha and smiled. “How can we help?”

Heather looked at Duke, still a little surprised that they’d offer such a thing, but Duke was quick to take advantage of it.

“They’re currently being led by Heather so they don’t get lost in the school, I presume, so you’ll find her with them. If you can fetch her and say you know where Heather is, you could lead them away from the entrance?”

“Sure. Anything else?”

“Just keep them indoors for as long as you can so we can run down to the parking lot. We can have them catching up with us and following the car back to my house - if they find out where I live, it’s all over.”

“Got it. Sounds easy,” Betty said, giving a thumbs up. “Though, Heather has to buy us snacks for the weekend.”

“ _ What? _ Bitch I’m homeless.”

“She makes a good point. She should save her money!” Martha agreed.

“No, I mean Heather.” She pointed to Duke. “Just because  _ somebody _ took my money yesterday.”

“You still owe us twelve more dollars.”

“Still.”

Duke rolled her eyes. “Fine, sure, I’ll give you all the snacks you want.”

“Hell yeah, free snacks  _ and _ fooling someone’s shitty parents.” Betty clapped her hands together. “Come on, Martha, let’s go.”

“Alright! Uh, what do we say?” she asked as they walked off.

“Just follow my lead, don’t worry about it.”

As Heather watched them go, she couldn’t help the grateful smile that slipped onto her lips.

_ I definitely owe them, _ she thought to herself, but she’d think of something to do in return some other time.

* * *

Veronica had been crouching on the pavement for a while now, it was starting to hurt their damn knees. But it was worth it, even though their hand was beginning to hurt from the key digging into their palm with each sharp motion.

They were so caught up in the task at hand that they had somehow not heard the low rumbling of a motorcycle from the almost empty parking lot behind them, but did hear,

“What in the holy hell are you doing?”

“ _ Jesus! _ ” Veronica dropped their key upon hearing JD’s voice. They turned around to glare at him. “Could you not sneak up on me? I’m trying to commit a  _ crime _ here!”

“Oh, crimes?” JD hopped off his motorcycle to lean over the wall. “So, why are you vandalising some poor soul’s car? And…” He read over the scrapings, and his expression actually broke into one of surprise. “Why  _ that? _ ” He leaped over the wall and gave them a weird look. Veronica figured they should keep the issue private, but they thought they might as well tell him to stop him from thinking they’re a complete and utter asshole.

“If I tell you, can you please keep it a secret?”

“Of course.”

“Alright.” They returned to carving into the letters, only going deeper. “It’s Heather’s parents’ car.”

There was a brief pause.

“Okay, makes sense,” JD said. “Can I join?”

Veronica shot him a weird look, but shuffled over anyway. “Sure? Just make sure you only go over what I’ve written - I’ve made the handwriting untraceable to me.”

“Ah, clever.” JD crouched down next to them, and Veronica expected him to pull out a key, but no, he pulled out a goddamn pocket knife.

“Hey, what?”

“What? Could be useful. Such as right now.” He immediately started digging into the letters already written out.

They both focused on making the words as deep and as noticeable as possible, until Veronica finally spoke up about something that had been plaguing their mind all week.

“So you and Heather, huh?”

“We’re not actually  _ dating, _ Veronica,” JD told them.

“I know. I mean… you two in general?” they asked. “When did that happen?”

JD seemed to take a moment to figure out how to reply, pursing his lips either in focus or with uncertainty.

“A few weeks ago, we started talking,” he said. “I’m not surprised she didn’t tell you. I think she was embarrassed about it.”

“...Why? I’d be overjoyed to hear about you talking,” Veronica said. “Also,  _ weeks? _ ”

“It’s more the subject matter,” he said. “The day after you all broke me out of my own house, she bumped into me in 7/11. She came over to me and asked me about my PTSD symptoms, and I suppose you could call it a bonding moment between us, though it was a stretch,” he explained. Veronica was so fascinated that they stopped carving into the car door.

“The heist? That was ages ago…” They thought back to weeks and  _ weeks _ ago, thinking about how, that whole time, the two of them had secretly been talking. Even if it wasn’t entirely friendly, it was something.

And in working things out in their head, they realised,

“That’s…  _ that’s _ how she realised she had PTSD?” They widened their eyes. “She got it from you.”

“Yeah. We weren’t really  _ friends _ though,” he said, entirely focused on carving deep into the car with his knife. “She just kinda… asked me for advice now and then, and then eventually I got sick of it.”

“What did you do?”

“Well… one day she came and asked me for advice, ‘cuz apparently the following week was gonna be triggering for her, in her words. I just got sick of her treating me like shit one moment and like a therapist the next so I told her to fuck off, essentially,” he said. In realising what week he was talking about, Veronica couldn’t help but shift uncomfortably, but despite their empathy for Heather, they pushed through it. Perhaps hearing it even gave them some sense of affirmation, though they’d never admit that, not after what Heather said to them yesterday.

“Well, you weren’t wrong to say that.”

“No, I don’t think I was,” JD said, lifting his gaze to them. There was something earnest in there. “But that didn’t stop me from regretting telling a rape victim to fuck off.”

“How- did she tell you that she-”

“No, and I don’t think she knows I know. But she said the following week was going to be triggering, and the following week was about sexual harassment and assault… so…”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“But… you weren’t wrong to tell her that.”

“I know, but… I don’t know, there’s a lot to it, Veronica,” he muttered. “I can’t do the right thing without any emotions attached, you know. Why do you think I was so worried about her during that week? During that speech? I knew she was probably mad at me, but I didn’t care, because I knew what she was feeling on that stage. I didn’t care that she put me in danger, because I understood what she was going through. It’s why I turned the power off, it’s why I stole the footage.”

“You… I’m sorry, what?” Veronica was dumbfounded. “You did what?”

“You heard,” he said. “So, yeah, we spoke again during her two weeks off, it was a lot nicer than the previous times… and yeah, I guess we’re friends now.”

And just like that, the affirmation was gone. It should have been a good thing - it  _ was _ a good thing, and the fact that it felt as though it wasn’t, the fact that they almost felt  _ disappointed _ that they were wrong was only pointing to Duke being the one in the right.

“She seems to actually care about you,” they murmured wistfully. “Has her plan been working?”

“Hm?”   


“Has anyone been bothering you?”

“Beyond being very obviously jealous of me? Nope. No one’s touched me.”

Veronica fell quiet.

“You don’t seem happy about that.”

“I am,” they told him.

“Are you?”

“Yes! Of course I am, why would I want anyone to hurt you?”

“I don’t think you do, but I think the way I’ve avoided doing so is bothering you somehow,” he said accusingly. “Or, more like,  _ her _ way of doing so.”   


“I… I…”

“So why are you doing  _ this, _ Veronica?” His tone relaxed as he nodded to the key in their hand. Again, Veronica fell silent, because they had no answer. Or, they had no answer they could say out loud, not yet.

And as it turns out, they didn’t need to, because the sounds of frantic footsteps made them shoot back onto their feet, ready to hide from any possible witnesses.

“Fuck! Ow!”

“Heather, are you okay?”

“I pick the  _ best _ times to wear heels!”

She could see Chandler scrambling back onto her feet after having tripped over, not even bothering to brush the dirt off of her clothes, which was very unlike her. She ran with Duke across the parking lot towards her car, faster than she’d ever seen the girl run.

“Quick, quick, quick, before they come back out,” Chandler panted, unlocking her car frantically. It was then that JD elegantly stepped onto the wall, hands deep in his pockets as he cooly grinned at them.

“Hey, where are you two going in such a hurry?”

“ _ Shit, _ ” Veronica hissed under their breath, ducking back behind the wall moments before Chandler and Duke turned towards them.

“JD? What are you- nevermind, we can’t talk now,” Chandler replied from across the lot.

“How come?”

“My parents. They’re looking for me - as in, they’re in school, searching for me. Heather and I need to make a break for it before they can catch up.” Veronica could hear heels walking around the concrete, as well as doors being opened and closed.

“Wait - don’t go.”

“Huh?”   


“You should stay. Just for a little longer.”

“What? Why? JD, they can’t catch me here! If they follow Heather and I home, we’re done for. We need to get my car out of here so they know we’re gone.”

“Alright. Let Heather drive, and you stay here. I’ll give you a lift home.”

“Excuse me? No one but me has ever driven my car.”

_ False. I’ve driven your car, _ Veronica wanted to say, but they couldn’t. Why they couldn’t, was an issue they were trying to figure out alone.

“Just this once - trust me, it’ll be worth it. You’ll love this.” JD stepped off the wall like it was nothing, which made Veronica want to continue watching the interaction, but they knew peeking over the wall would make them look like a creep. They shuffled along the floor, staying behind the wall, and yes, they were aware how pathetic they probably looked right now, until they reached a car parked next to it in the parking lot, allowing them to hop over the wall without being seen. They sat behind the car and craned their head around the side, staying hidden enough for Chandler to not notice them at all. 

“Trust me on this one? Please?” JD pleaded, clasping his hands together and gazing at her with puppy-dog eyes. Chandler, who was still standing next to her car, still seemed reluctant, but her curiosity was most definitely peaked. And it was then that Veronica realised what JD was doing, and they had no idea how to feel.

_ You’re… you’re showing her  _ now? They swallowed.  _ I wasn’t planning for her to see it now! _ But then again, if Heather wasn’t living with her parents… when was she going to see it at all?

_ Did I even want her to see it? _ They weren’t sure, they just knew that she would love it, or at least appreciate it. They didn’t need to see her actual reaction to know that.

“Alright, fine, but we have to hide before my parents find me.”

“Where’s their car?”

“Right behind you.” She passed her keys to Duke through the window and slowly began to walk over to him. “Heather, don’t crash my baby.”

“I’m a better driver than you.”

“Still.”

The car came to life, and Veronica watched as Duke fumbled with the new controls, but quickly got the hang of it. As she was pulling out of the parking space, she looked over in Veronica’s direction and caught their eye. She stared at her in confusion, while Veronica, despite the tension between them, begged her silently to say nothing. Duke just rolled her eyes, clearly not caring less, or maybe judging her for hiding from Heather at all, before pulling out and driving off. When looking back over to JD and Chandler, she saw that they were busy talking among themselves.

“Hide  _ here? _ They’ll see us.”

“We’ll be behind a wall  _ and _ a motorcycle, chill.”

“That’s not a big wall.”

“Get on the ground then, you bimbo.”

“Did you just call me a  _ bimbo? _ ”

“All in good fun.”

Strangely enough, hearing the two of them banter was even stranger than seeing Chandler straddling JD in the middle of the cafeteria, because this was actually  _ real. _ It made them dart over to the car opposite the one they were hiding behind as quietly as they could in an attempt to get a better view of the two of them, as well as still having a good hiding spot that would put them out of view of them, or anyone else who would most definitely be returning soon. Mara couldn’t keep her parents walking aimlessly around the school for long.

“So, why am I staying here and risking being dragged back to hell with my parents?” she asked, sitting down next to JD on the ground, backs against the wall and side view hidden by JD’s bike, a spot she wouldn’t be caught dead sitting at in front of anyone outside of her circle. But, since that circle was kind of broken, they supposed that her walls had crumbled too.

“Well, I’ll give you a hint. I already knew where your parents’ car was,” he said with a relaxed grin, just as he held up his pocket knife in front of her. She widened her eyes as the knife flipped back into its casing so he could return it into one of his inside pockets.

“Why the  _ hell _ do you have a fucking knife?” she questioned. “And what the fuck do you mean-?”

She seemed to get the hint to at least check what he was referring to, twisting around to look over the wall and get a better view of the damage done to her parents’ car. When she saw, and when she  _ read, _ she let out an indecipherable noise, and for a moment, Veronica dreaded that maybe they had made a mistake. But when Heather turned around, her eyes were wide with shock, of course, but her lips were upturned into an amazed grin, one that kept twitching with how difficult it seemed to be for her to process what she’d been looking at. She seemed to want to say something, but by the time she found her words, more footsteps near the parking lot sounded, this time three pairs of them. One look confirmed it to be Chandler’s parents, both with an irritated look on their faces, with Mara following behind them gingerly.

“Gosh, this means we have to wait out in the  _ cold _ for her to come back to her-” her mother seemed to pause, both in her speech and her tracks as she scanned the parking lot. Veronica hid behind the car, out of view. “Her car’s  _ gone. _ ”

“Oh, it is?” Veronica could tell Mara wasn’t very good at lying, her tone sounded very fake in terms of sounding disappointed, but Chandler’s parents likely didn’t know what her telling the truth sounded like. “Oh, we must have missed her. Sorry about that.”

“I knew we should have waited out here, Esther,” Heather’s father grumbled.

“Well it’s  _ cold _ out here, Joel.” The footsteps started again. “No matter. We have a week until your mother’s birthday, we can come back next week and-  _ WHAT THE FUCK! _ ”

Her scream belted across the whole parking lot, and Veronica was thankful they were the only ones around. They’d heard how loud Heather’s voice could get, and they had now figured out where exactly that trait had come from, because God, could that woman screech like a fucking eagle.

“What… when did…” Her father had been emotionless, up until now. Now, he actually seemed confused. Distraught, even. “Who  _ did _ this?”

“Who did what?” Now Mara was legitimately curious, and Veronica risked looking over to the scene and, though the motorcycle was blocking some of their view, they could see Mara also taking in the view, and was just as shocked as the two of them. Only, she was most definitely  _ not _ distraught, even if she had to act like it.

“Oh… goodness… that’s… who would write such a thing?” Mara griped in a weirdly dry tone. Veronica then looked down to JD and Heather, who were both covering their mouths in an attempt to not burst out laughing and blow their cover. Heather in particular was having a hard time doing so, and it made Veronica’s heart do things that they were supposed to be pushing down these days.

“I don’t… who  _ would? _ ” Her mother seemed to be going through the five stages of grief all at once, maybe even adding a sixth stage while she was at it. “Was it Heather? It couldn’t have been...”

“That doesn’t look like her handwriting,” Mara pointed out.

“Also, Heather is a lot of things, but she’s not a  _ delinquent, _ ” her father said. Through her amusement, Heather just mouthed,

_ “Yes I am.” _

“How the fu- I mean…” Her mother took a deep breath. “How exactly do we get  _ home? _ We can’t drive this thing now!”

“And what, leave it here?” her father argued. “We have to take it home. We’ll hide it in the garage and decide what to do with it then.”

“We have to  _ drive _ with  _ that _ written on it?”

Heather accidentally let out a gasp of air, but luckily her parents were too hysterical to notice.

“Looks like we  _ do, _ yeah.”

“Oh for goodness’ sake…”

And Veronica couldn’t deny that they were also finding this very,  _ very _ amusing. And oh so satisfying. From day one of hearing the shit Heather’s parents had put her through, they knew they despised them, but they never thought they’d get the chance to get sweet, sweet revenge. In fact, they weren’t even sure if they’d ever meet them - not they they had ever wanted to.

However, it was worth going through the misery of shaking her mother’s hand if it meant watching them grumble amongst themselves as they were essentially forced to step back into their car. Their really expensive, pretty car without a single dent in it.

Well, other than the very deep carving along its side made out of a total of fourteen large letters - technically fifteen, had Veronica not omitted one out of interest for anyone who may not want to see a certain word drive by them so casually. Those words spelled something that said nothing about Heather unless you knew her and knew of her trauma, only about them, and what they had done.

**_R-PE APOLOGISTS._ **

Was it egotistical to say that Veronica was patting themselves on the back continuously for the idea? Maybe, but the look of pure misery on their faces as they sat back down into the two front seats was something they wanted to boast about causing for a  _ long _ time to come.

“Um, bye! I’m sorry about your car,” Mara lied, giving them a timid wave. “I hope you find Heather soon,” she lied again.

Heather’s parents didn’t respond. They simply hung their heads in shame as Heather’s father drove them off, and drove  _ fast, _ definitely passing the speed limit, likely to rush by any pedestrians too quickly for them to be able to read what was on their car. Unfortunately for them, Veronica knew how many red lights there were on the way to their house.

At the sound of skidding tired and a fading motor, Heather finally let out a loud cackle, sinking down the wall as she let tears of glee roll down her face.

“Holy shit, holy  _ shit! _ ” she exclaimed, kicking her feet excitedly. “Oh my God, that was perfect, I…” It was then she paused, and looked back at JD with a mixture of gratitude and confusion. “I… you did that. It was amazing, and  _ thank you, _ but how did- I haven’t told you-”

“I know what happened to you, Heather,” he confessed. “You kinda… hinted at it heavily when you told me that a week focusing on  _ sexual harassment _ was going to be triggering to you. I never questioned you about it though, I thought I’d let you tell me when you were ready, but, ah, nevermind, I guess.”

“Oh.” Heather slowly nodded, pursing her lips. “Yeah, probably should have thought that through before telling you that.” She then shook her head. “But… even then, you didn’t know about my parents. There was  _ no way _ for you to know about my parents, not unless someone told you.”

“No one told me.”

“Then how did…”

“I helped with it, sure. The knife was useful, at last. But I didn’t write it.”

“But… okay, I know it wasn’t  _ Heather, _ she was with me the whole time. And it wasn’t Heather, she was with my  _ parents _ the whole time, and I didn’t recognise the handwriting at all, so-”

_ Shit. _ Veronica probably should have figured she’d work it out, but even then, they weren’t sure what to do. Do they keep hiding? Pretend that they had nothing to do with it?

But there was no point in that, because they gave another look to Heather, who was staring at nothing as she was faced with the realisation. Veronica sighed, the gig was up, there was no use in hiding. They stood up and stepped out from behind the car, making no effort to stay hidden. They kept their head down as they walked, but they could still see Heather, staring at them in astonishment, and while Veronica knew it was selfish and stupid to be offended by the thought of Heather not expecting Veronica to do such a thing, what with Veronica making such an effort to distance themselves from her, they were still hurt. Not by her, but by themselves, and by their own actions.

“Oh my God, Ronnie!” She flinched, having somehow forgotten Mara’s presence. She leaped over the wall like it was a hurdle and dashed towards her, embracing her tightly. “That was so  _ evil _ and yet so  _ amazing! _ ” She gazed up at her fondly, eyes sparkling with admiration. Funny, how it had been a while since Veronica had seen such an expression aimed at them, and when it finally is, it’s after they do something  _ illegal. _ “You’re an evil genius!”

Veronica laughed nervously. “Yeah, well, it was nothing.” They ran their fingers through their hair. “I guess I’m… not such a good person after all, huh?”

“Maybe not in a legal sense, no,” Mara chuckled. “But… in every other sense, I’ll have to disagree.”

“Hm.” Veronica’s shoulders slumped, knowing that all of this would plague their thoughts yet again tonight. It was stupid and minor, but they still had so much to think about, and so much to figure out, that of  _ course _ even the highlights of their day were going to cause them worry.

Distracting them from that, though, was the feeling of eyes on them. They looked back over to JD and Heather, who were both now standing up - specifically Heather, who despite being a fair distance away from them now, Veronica could still see the whirlwind of emotions pooling in her blue eyes. There were so many feelings, and yet they knew none of them were malicious.

It made Veronica feel even more guilty.

Then Heather made unrecognisable gestures, which Veronica didn’t understand, but they knew Mara would.

“What did she say?” she asked. Mara looked back up at them and smiled.

“She says thank you.”

It should have felt good, because it was all they had truly wanted out of this.

And yet… it hurt.

Because they’d put themselves in a position where Heather couldn’t say those words to their face. Where Heather couldn’t smile at them, couldn’t kiss them as a thank you, couldn’t tell them, “How about we go and celebrate in our own way, huh?” with whatever that way being a night just for them, either ending with sex or with simple cuddles. And for what, exactly? Veronica thought they had known, but now…

Now they were convinced they had lost sight of it.

And how to deal with that loss exactly, they still weren’t sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg chansaw real again???? 😳
> 
> https://heathersgameoftag.tumblr.com/


	4. Day Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The whole school gets together to celebrate something wonderful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: transmisogyny, transphobia, self harm mentions, PTSD mentions, rape mentions

“I can’t believe my hair still is _wet,_ ” Heather grumbled as she pulled into her usual parking place, hopefully with no seeking eyes from her parents in the bushes. She doubted it - she knew full well they prioritized their work over her, after all. A hand came and brushed over her locks and tutted.

“Then you should have gotten up earlier! I only rushed you because I knew my parents would have gotten out of bed before you finished, otherwise. You have _long_ showers.” She wiped the wetness onto her red skirt. “Besides, it’s not that bad! Perks of having short hair - it dries quickly.”

Heather felt through her hair and realised that it had indeed dried significantly faster on its own than it would have back when it was long. It was still moist - it was thick, after all - but she could predict it would be dry in maybe an hour, which wasn’t so bad. A little embarrassing to walk around school with it though.

“I woke up early anyway! How much earlier was I supposed to wake up?”

“Dunno, earlier.”

“Thanks, that helps.”

The two of them got out of her car and began to walk towards the school, the whole time Heather wishing the wind could be a little stronger and do a hair-dryer’s job.

“Having to sneak around in a house is beginning to grate on me,” she admitted, not expecting Duke to have heard her.

“I know, but you know they’ll say no if I ask if you can _live_ there.”

“What if they find out, Heather? What will they do then?”

“I don’t know. We make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Somehow Heather doubted they could keep this up forever. Not only did Heather have to trap herself in Duke’s room almost all the time, but getting food at usual times, going to the bathroom, showering and so on were all such _stressful_ jobs. The amount of times she had to dart back across the hallway into Duke’s bedroom because she heard footsteps that sounded like they were coming upstairs was already too many for just one week, and _God_ did she miss cooking proper meals for herself. She knew full well she couldn’t stay like this for long. And sure, stress was preferred to a constant fear of dissociating and harming herself, but whatever, she could complain.

Distracting her from the stressful situation at “home”, however, was walking into Westerburg. Something was different, the atmosphere was off. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly what, maybe it was the more chippy sounding chatter she passed by in the hallways, maybe it was seeing a lot more smiles than normal, maybe it was hearing so much laughter, without any of it being malicious or out of mockery.

“Is it me, or is everything… _off?_ ” Heather questioned, slowing down to talk to Duke, who seemed unphased.

“Off? How so?”

“I don’t know, I feel like I’m in an episode of the _Twilight Zone._ ”

She has no idea what she could have possibly missed. Sure, she was a little later than usual because of her hair washing struggles, but classes had yet to start, so what the hell could she have missed?

The true icing on the what-the-fuckery cake though, was seeing a football team march down a hallway they were about to cross, cheering complete gibberish to her, followed by “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” with fists punching the air. In response, they didn’t get the usual irritated look or students looking for a place to duck for cover, but instead, students _laughing_ along with them, like there was a shared happiness amongst them.

The school was unified, and she was _scared._

“Jesus Christ, do they have to be so loud in the morning?” Duke grumbled, looking down the hallway where the team continued to parade. Heather ignored her gripe, however, and instead grabbed her hand and started to pull her along. “Hey, what are you-”

“This is _weird,_ something is _wrong,_ I want to get to the bottom of it.”

“What’s weird? I don’t know what you’re-”

“Everyone is far too happy.”

“Is that a bad thing? I mean, I figured you were trying to be nicer these days.”

“It’s _not,_ it’s just unusual.” She looked around, searching for possible answers, until finally her eyes landed on the Country Club Kids up ahead. Not a pleasant sight to see, but definitely a useful one, especially because even _they_ seemed to be a lot more loosened up than usual, with actual smiles on their faces instead of the regular entitlement they always wore.

“Courtney,” she practically announced her presence, stopping just behind Courtney as she waited for her to turn around, also letting go of Duke’s hand. Courtney did indeed spin to face her, her face doing that thing where it lights up at the sight of her, but more like a lightbulb that needs to be changed with how dim it is and how much it was flickering. Then when her eyes landed on Duke, that lightbulb went out entirely, before looking back to her.

“Heather! Haven’t spoken to you all week,” she said with a smile. “Welcome back.” Her eyes wandered around her hairline. “New look, I see.”

“Mhmm, indeed,” she replied, consciously running her hand through her slightly moist hair. It was still strange to touch, with how it ended so early on her palm. “I needed to ask - is there something I’m missing?”  
  
“What do you mean?”

“I feel like there’s some widespread school news I don’t know about,” she explained. “Care to tell me?”

Courtney let out a gasp, eyes widening in realising she wasn’t onboard with _something._ “Heather, you _don’t know?_ ”

“No? No, I don’t, that’s why I’m asking you.”

“Oh my gosh,” Courtney said with a laugh that actually seemed genuine. “Heather, Ms Fleming _resigned._ ”

And like that, a penny dropped and Heather found herself speechless. She was sure she heard her wrong at first, but the hallway wasn’t loud enough for her to mishear things. It was just so hard to believe that something so… _perfect_ had happened.

“Resigned?” she echoed.

“Yeah, she left this week - yesterday, I assume. No one knows the reason why, but she’s gone!”

 _No one knows the reason, huh?_ Heather may be overthinking things, may be putting herself on too high of a pedestal like she always did, but she had a feeling that she might. Maybe, just _maybe,_ somebody told her some things that shattered her confidence and her ego to the point where she couldn’t rebuild them, leading to her having no other choice but to leave.

God, _leave._ She _left._ She’d never have to see her face again, and she was so, so sure that the reasons behind it was because of _her._  
  
“Uh… Heather?” Courtney was searching her expression with concern, before glancing at Duke. “Is she okay?”

“Hm? Yeah, why?”

“She’s smiling.”

“And?”

“I’ve… I’ve never seen her genuinely smile before. It’s kind of scary.”

“Oh. Okay, one sec.” Hands clapped in front of her eyes, causing her to snap out of her blissful trance. “Heather!”

“Chill, I’m here.” She rolled her eyes at Duke. “And thanks for letting me know, Courtney, that’s the best news I’ve heard in a _long time._ "

“You’re very welcome.” She seemed to have recovered from seeing the sight of her properly smiling, and it was strange to think that most students found that sighting disturbing, but then again, she went out of her way to make sure that people only saw her capable of happiness through others’ demise. “And since you’re so excited about it, you’ll be happy to know that Keith’s holding a party.” She glanced at Keith who stood with the rest of her group and gave him a wave that was a little too flirtatious, and Keith waved back. “His parents are out this weekend and his house is _huge,_ so it’s perfect.”

“Oh, a party? It’s been _forever._ ” It wasn’t until then did Heather realise how much she craved that setting again. It had been three whole weeks and she had spent the majority of it trapped in one singular room. She desperately needed her senses to be overwhelmed by loud music and people bumping into her again. “I’m so there. What day?”

“Saturday.”

“Perfect. Heather, you free this Saturday?”

“Yeah. Sure, I’m there, why not?” She shrugged.

“Wait, um,” Courtney stopped, a disgruntled look appearing on her face. She glimpsed at Heather with uncertainty. “She’s coming too?”

Heather paused. “Yes? Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Um…” She looked at her like that was a stupid question. “Can I talk to you? Alone?”

Heather looked back at Duke, who just exasperatedly gestured for her to take the offer. She clearly expected this somehow, which only made Heather more confused.

“Sure.”

Courtney pulled her aside, notably away from Duke, and leaned forward to lower her voice.

“Why are you still friends with her?” she asked. “I mean… you know about… you know.” She made a weird gesture around her groin area, and Heather immediately clicked on. She scowled.

“Yeah. What about it?” She folded her arms, leering closer to her. “Why _wouldn’t_ I still be friends with her because of _that?_ ”

Courtney looked a little stunned, as if that reason alone should have been enough for Heather to drop her on the spot. It’s not like she didn’t understand why. She was known as cruel and ruthless and always put people with strange quirks down for the sheer crime of having those quirks. That didn’t mean she wasn’t determined to change that perception, however.

“Well… she’s… Heather, she’s a _freak._ ”

“ _Is_ she?”

“Yeah! She’s not a real girl - why would you still hang out with someone like that-?”

Though she let her finish her sentence, Heather stopped her from spouting anymore bullshit with a single slam against the lockers behind Courtney. She fell silent, flinching when her palm hit the metal surfaces behind her, sinking under her gaze.

“Let me reiterate something to you, sweetheart,” she sneered. “When you refer to Heather, you will refer to her as what she is - a girl. She’s a _woman,_ regardless of what may be under her skirt, and regardless of what name she might have gone by when she was a kid. I don’t care about your skewed view of her - you keep it to yourself, you hear me?”

While Courtney seemed threatened, she didn’t back down. She was too proud for that.

“Heather, I don’t get it,” she muttered, averting her gaze. “Why have you been so…”

“So what?”

“So _nice?_ No, not nice, just… tolerant of the scum of the school! First your choice in boyfriend, which was already incredibly questionable, and now _this?_ ” She nodded to Duke. “Why can’t you put her in her place?”

“What’s her _place,_ Courtney?”

“I don’t know, at the bottom of the barrel! Just not where she is now. Do you know how _pushy_ and _bossy_ she’s been whilst you were gone? It’s why I’m so relieved to have you back - I thought you’d _deal_ with her!”

Hearing that made something click in Heather’s mind as she stared down at a very irritated, yet somehow humiliated Courtney. She let out a pitiful cackle.

“Oh, I see what this is. You’re embarrassed.” She hunched over and smirked. “Embarrassed that now _you’re_ the one being ordered around by someone who you’d otherwise step all over. Poor Courtney, that must feel _awful_ and _humiliating._ ” She laughed again. “You don’t like taking orders from a trans woman? That’s just too bad. Maybe work on that, because she’s not going away. Or at least, I’m certainly not going to stop her.” She leaned even closer. “In fact, I’ll _gladly_ do her bidding for her, so if I were you, I’d watch where you step in future.”

Courtney had pressed herself up against the lockers at this point, nowhere to back away. “But… but you don’t do her bidding! She does _yours!_ ”

“Seasons change, and so do we,” she said. “Either way, the two of us still have more say than you ever will, and I hope that thought eats at you slowly.” She finally leaned back and smiled at her sweetly. “So, what was Keith’s address again?” She spoke slightly louder so that people could overhear her, including the rest of the Country Club Kids on the other side of the hallway. When Courtney didn’t respond beyond a simple flabbergasted mouth twitch, Keith spoke up.

“Oh, it’s 24 Haven Avenue! At the top of the hill, you can’t miss it.”

She batted her lashes appreciatively at him. “Thank you! Let me write that down.” She reached into her bag and found a pen, then wrote it down on her wrist. “Excited to see you there! Right, Heather?”

Heather looked back to her as if she’d been lost in her own world, before nodding.

“Yeah, I’ll be there.”

“Excellent.” She stepped further away from Courtney and grinned. “Well, good talk. Looking forward to the weekend.”

Courtney just helplessly glared at her, then at how her arm slowly came to link with Duke’s.

“Right,” she grunted. Satisfied that she wasn’t going to try and say anything else, Heather made her exit, arm still linked with Duke’s.

“So, what did she say about me?” Duke asked as soon as they were out of earshot. Heather’s pace slowed.

“How did you guess-”

“I’m not stupid. I know the popular kids hate me right now.” She rolled her eyes. “And Courtney’s thrown one or two comments my way, though she did get tripped up after saying them, so I’m not too bothered.”

“Well, brief version, she’s mad that a trans woman is pushing her and the whole school around,” she said.

“What did you say?”

“I told her to suck it up and that she was pathetic. Not those exact words, but it’s what I implied.”

Duke giggled. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.” She then stopped them both in the hallway, pulling them aside. “Though, you don’t have to protect me, you know. I get that my situation is bad, but I’ve lasted just fine on my own over the past couple of weeks.”

Heather stared at her doubtfully. “I know you have, but doesn’t it ever get too much?”

Duke looked ready to deny it, but nothing left her mouth when her lips parted.

“Well… sometimes, I guess.”

“I know you don’t want me to fight your battles, but can you at least let me help?” she asked, feeling her stomach churn with discomfort. She’d had this exact conversation before, she knew, and so did Duke, who seemed to shift with uncertainty. She fully expected the usual reply, that being no, she could handle it herself, but instead, she said,

“I think I should probably accept that offer.” She scratched her scalp sheepishly. “You and Heather both see right through me - I’m dealing with far too much at once.”

“I _know_ you are,” Heather said. “And I get it, you know. Wanting to be seen as unbreakable. But I don’t want you starting to believe it yourself - besides, doing your bidding is the least I can do.”

Duke raised a brow in intrigue. “My _bidding,_ huh? Well, when you word it like that…”

“Hey, it’s like Courtney said, you’ve been at the top of the school ever since I disappeared. Everyone’s expecting me to take back the crown, but quite frankly, I think I should dismay everyone and let you keep it. If that’s something you’d want.”

Duke blinked up at her in surprise, fidgeting with the red scrunchie keeping her hair in its loose ponytail.

“Really?”

“Sure. Besides, you’re far more eye catching than me these days.” She covered her mouth. “Shit, was that too flirty? I’m not meant to be flirting right now.”

Duke giggled, a slight blush appearing on her cheeks. “I’ll just take it as a friendly compliment.” Cutting their conversation short, to Heather’s irritation, was the sound of the bell. “Well, I’ll see you later, then.”

“Yeah. See you.”

For some reason, maybe out of curiosity, or admiration, Heather stayed standing where she was to watch Duke leave. She had meant what she had said; she was just so eye catching these days, and had there not been such a stigma around her, she knew boys would be drooling all over her. Correction - _openly_ drooling over her. No way did all of that attraction get flushed into the gutter after her coming out, it simply was kept a dirty little secret. She decided to hell with them all, and that they were nothing but insecure cowards for not appreciating who was genuinely such an amazing person that Heather despised herself for almost chasing out of her life. Especially now, with how confidently she walked down the halls, how her bright red outfit was enough to turn everyone’s heads, even if they would never admit that it had that effect on them.

But she could, because even if she couldn’t be with her in the way she so desperately she wanted, she could tell she had fallen _hard._

She definitely loved her a lot.

\---

“Have you heard the news, babe?”

Heather knew resting her arms on Veronica’s lap was likely too affectionate, but she couldn’t help but feel giddy today. Veronica gazed down at her from the table he was sitting on and smiled.

“About Miss Fleming resigning? I think everyone has.”

“Isn’t it exciting?”

“Yeah,” Veronica replied. He seemed a little deflated, and Heather knew full well he was capable of being far more excited than he currently seemed, but at least his smile was wider than it had been for the past week or so. She noticed his eyes drift elsewhere, however, and he murmured, “I bet Heather’s happy.”

Heather followed his gaze across the cafeteria, seeing both Chandler and Duke standing near their old table, both of them laughing amongst themselves with Chandler in particular looking ecstatic. She rarely let the school see her so joyful, she’d always viewed it as showing weakness for reasons Heather never fully understood. It just went to show how strangely unified the school felt today. She’d hardly heard any name calling or malicious laughter today, only jokes at Ms Fleming’s expense that everyone, from the weakest geek to the toughest football player could laugh at together. She wished every day could be like this, but she’d cherish it while it lasted.

“I’m sure she is,” she said, looking back at him. “Everyone is.”

“Yeah. So am I.” When Heather moved her arms off of his lap, he immediately rested his elbows there and let his cheeks sink into his palm. Heather frowned.

“You don’t seem it.”

“Hm?”

“You seem down.” Heather hopped onto the table next to him. “How can you be? Fleming’s gone and you keyed Heather’s parents' car and got away with it.”

“I’ve just been overthinking lately.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Not right now. Betty, Martha and JD will be here soon anyway, I’d rather they didn’t walk into me having a pity party.”

“Oh. Well, speaking of parties, will a party invite cheer you up?” She fluttered her lashes hopefully. Veronica raised a brow.

“That depends, what’s the occasion?”

“Ms Fleming leaving.”

“Okay, that does kinda sound fun,” he chuckled. “It isn’t tomorrow, is it?”

“No - Saturday. Why?”

“Oh, I have plans for tomorrow with my parents.”

“What are you doing?”

“You’ll see.” He winked, before turning his attention towards three figures walking towards them. “Hey, guys.”

“Hello! Sorry we’re late,” Martha chirped happily.

“That’s alright, I haven’t shown my face lately, I can’t complain.”

“Yeah, where have you been?” Betty exclaimed. “The table’s felt empty without you.”

“I wonder how it felt before all of this,” Veronica muttered to himself just loud enough for Heather to overhear.

“They’ve been up to mischief,” JD stated, nodding to him. He rolled his eyes.

“So were you.”

“JD told us all about it!” Martha said. “Are you sure you won’t get in trouble?”

“Nah,” JD replied.

“Hopefully not,” Veronica added. “Anyway, you wanna go get in line?”

“Sure, let’s-” Betty stopped in her tracks, catching something in the distance. “Oh no, douche alert.”

Both Veronica and Heather turned to see Kurt and Ram scuttling towards their table. Strangely enough, they took a route around the edge of the cafeteria rather than slicing right through the middle like they usually did. It was never an inconvenience for them to weave through the students that crowded the little standing space that there was, mainly because they never weaved, they just shoved people out of their way. This time, though, it was almost like they were trying to avoid being showered with attention for once.

“Heather!” It was Kurt who let out the first whine, and it already filled Heather with dread. She took a deep breath to prepare herself, and shuffled along the table to meet them halfway.

“Yes?” she replied as nicely as she could.

“Can you tell everyone to stop saying anything happened between us and Heather?” he asked with a whisper. “People keep saying stuff that’s not true!”

“What kind of stuff?”

“You know…” He made a gesture with his finger sliding into a ring he made with his other hand. Heather nodded in understanding.

“Oh, sex stuff?” She bit back a snicker in realising what this was about. Heather had told her she got Diego and Hale to get the ball rolling yesterday, which was _genius,_ she never would have thought of asking them. “No, can’t do that, sorry.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s true. I can’t refute true things.”

“ _Heather!_ ” Kurt exclaimed in dismay.

“It isn’t, we swear!” Ram spoke up, before glancing to Heather’s side. “Veronica! You can back us up, right?”

“Back what up?” he asked, shuffling along the table. “What’s this about?”

“People keep saying we did stuff with Heather! Now everyone’s bringing up that date we went on _ages_ ago. You can tell everyone it isn’t true, right?” Ram pleaded with his hands clasped together like a child praying to God for the latest gaming console to be dropped in front of him. Heather grimaced - she hadn’t told Veronica about her and Heather’s plan, and therefore hadn’t told him to not debunk it. She looked at him, silently hoping that he would, by some miracle, say that something _did_ happen that night, even though implying such a thing was definitely the last thing he wanted. He looked confused, trying to search Heather’s expression for an answer, and when he didn’t find one, he turned back to Kurt and Ram.

“I’m sorry, didn’t you two boast about how _well_ that night went?” he asked. “Why are you so eager to say nothing happened now?”

“Because- because we didn’t know Heather was trans at the time!” Kurt said. Heather sucked in a breath, not just because she was sure Veronica would say that nothing happened between them, but also because it would land on the nearby ears that had turned towards them, despite their efforts to remain quiet. If they heard Veronica confirm Kurt and Ram’s argument, her and Heather’s plan would likely collapse.

“Well, that doesn’t change the fact that you two…” he mimicked Kurt’s early phallic gesture, “...now, does it?”

Both Ram and Kurt’s jaws dropped. “B-but we _didn’t!_ ”

“Yeah, neither of you stayed for any of that!”

Veronica raised a brow, smirking. “Then why were you _so convinced_ of a completely different story back when it happened, huh? Are you saying that you _lie_ about all of your hookups?”

They both stopped in their tracks, and the flabbergasted looks on their faces made it so Heather couldn’t hold in her laughter.

“Well, um-” they stammered upon realising the many eyes now on them, curious to hear what they had to say. Clearly neither of them were ready to admit either option here. “ _No,_ that’s not what we’re saying, but-”

“Then just accept you banged Heather like any other girl,” Veronica said with an impish grin, continuing to make the gesture, only this time more vulgar. Heather just laughed at their misfortune, and how their faces had turned red with embarrassment.

“Except- except we _couldn’t_ have!” Kurt exclaimed. “Heather doesn’t have-” He held up the ring he had made with his fingers. “So you’re full of shit!”

While both Veronica and Heather knew that that wasn’t true, they weren’t about to reveal that they knew that information. Instead, Veronica just laughed.

“Oh, _this-_ ” he held up his own ‘ring’, “isn’t Heather. This is _you._ ”

“I- huh?” Heather wasn’t sure if she had ever heard Kurt squeak before now.

“You heard me. Quit the bullshit, Kurt, and just admit the girl pegged you.”

“She _what?_ ”

Kurt’s protest was drowned out by the students sitting close by and listening in bursting out with laughter. Heather knew full well that most of them probably didn’t even know what the word ‘pegging’ even meant, but by Veronica’s description, they likely figured it out pretty easily. Heather felt almost evil for laughing at such a crude rumour that she knew wasn’t true, but at the same time, worse had been spread about her and so many other girls in the school, many of them by these two, who were now lowering their heads prudishly. Heather looked around to see who else was listening in; most tables sitting close by were laughing, of course, with several people sitting on there repeating what Veronica had said to their own neighbouring tables. Betty, Martha and JD were also listening, and while Martha was grimacing, she imagined it wasn’t because she disapproved, since she would occasionally snicker along with Betty, who was having a goddamn riot. At some point as well, though, Heather and Heather had come over to them, keeping a bit of a distance, but not too much to not hear them. Chandler’s hand was linked with JD’s as they both muttered to each other with smirks on their faces, while Duke was both blushing and covering her face sheepishly, but also cackling to herself.

“T-take it back!” Kurt barked at Veronica furiously, though the threatening aura was weakened by his flushed face. “You can’t just spread rumours like that!”

“Yeah!” Ram chimed in. “That’s so _shitty,_ Sawyer! You can’t tell people we did things that never happened!”

Both Veronica and Heather exchanged a knowing glance.

“You’re right,” Veronica sighed. “Who would _do_ such a thing?”

“Yeah,” Heather added. “Who’d spread sexual rumours about someone, even if they never happened?” She leaned closer to them, Kurt in particular, and sneered. “That sounds _horrid._ ”

Kurt shrank underneath her glare, actually stepping away. He stared at the ground silently, before muttering,

“Can you at least tell people that you didn’t fake it?”

“Huh?” She blinked at him in confusion. “Fake what?”

“Finishing. Heather told everyone you faked it. Can you say it’s not true? _Please?_ ”

“Heather who?”

“Chandler.”

She snorted out loud. She had actually forgotten she’d confessed that to her _ages_ ago, not that she even needed to confess to begin with, and she had no idea why she let that slip, but she wasn’t complaining.

“Again, can’t refute things that are true,” she said through a fit of giggles. Kurt looked betrayed.

“Wait, so… so you _did?_ Seriously?”

“Kurt, you finish in like five minutes and fall asleep immediately afterwards, no _shit_ I’ve never come from that.”

She spoke a little louder that time, purely so the students surrounding them could pick up on that too. And that they did, because they laughed again while Kurt and Ram only grew more and more ashamed by the minute, and Heather should not have enjoyed picking up their reputation and crushing it in her hand as much as she did.

“Come on, dude, this is only making everything worse,” Ram muttered to Kurt, giving him a nudge.

“But we can’t just run away, that’ll make us look like pansies.”

“The longer we stand here it makes us look like _buffoons._ ” 

Heather and Veronica smiled and waved them goodbye sweetly as they scurried off, keeping their faces hidden from the crowd as they, again, took the route around the edge of the cafeteria. It also meant passing Heather and Heather when they did so, who both just snidely laughed at their humiliation. Once the laughter died down and Kurt and Ram escaped the cafeteria’s judging eyes, Heather and Veronica shuffled back to their group, with Veronica noticeably keeping his head down upon realising Chandler and Duke were standing nearby.

“Should I have enjoyed being a bitch as much as I did?” Veronica mumbled.

“Sure you should have! You’ve been one of us for half a year now, it’s a given,” Heather giggled, placing an arm around her shoulders. He smiled gingerly, and said no more.

“That was _hilarious,_ ” Betty wheezed, holding onto Martha’s shoulder to keep herself standing. “Please do that again sometime.”

“They kind of deserved that,” Martha agreed.

“Good job, would like to see it again,” JD said, giving a thumbs up. Veronica chuckled nervously, tucking some hair behind his ear.

“Today’s just getting better and better!” Heather said happily, her hands waving up and down and feet stomping against the seat. “First Ms Fleming resigned, and now this.” She gasped. “Speaking of which! I have special privileges of being a Heather, so I can invite whoever I want; do you wanna come to the party this Saturday?”

“Party?” Betty tilted her head.

“To celebrate Ms Fleming resigning.”

“Cheers, I’ll drink to that, girl.” She clicked her tongue, before turning to Martha. “What d’ya say, wanna go? It’s a pretty good theme for a party.”

“Hmm… are you going, Veronica?” Martha asked.

“Yeah, I have a lot to celebrate.”

“Then sure!”

“Have fun, don’t tattoo anyone while you’re there,” JD stepped forward, Chandler still attached to his arm as he did so. Chandler let out a scoff.

“Excuse me? You’re going too.”

“Wh- huh? Why?”

“You’re my boyfriend, you have to.”

“What kind of rule is that?”

“I don’t know, but it’s a rule regardless.”

JD glanced at Duke. “She for real?”

“In fairness, it would be weird if she showed up and you didn’t. Also, people will try and flirt with her, and you don’t want that as her _boyfriend,_ ” she cooed that last word, batting her lashes as she smirked. JD frowned, looking to Betty for support.

“What’re you looking at me for? I think you should come too,” she said.

“Yeah, you’ve been to one before, why not this one?” Veronica asked.

“That was for _you,_ Veronica. Eighteenth parties are special.”

“Then why didn’t you have one?”

“They’re special to _some_ people,” he corrected himself.

“You’re coming,” Chandler said sternly. JD held up his hands, one of them still being held by Chandler.

“Okay! So long as I don’t get roped into more illegal tattoo distribution.”

“No one forced you!” Betty barked. “Also, I only brought that pen to do them on _myself._ Then I got drunk and I guess I turned evil.”

“Oh, _sure,_ blame it on the alcohol.” Chandler rolled her eyes and flicked her wrist dismissively. “We all know alcohol just makes you act how you _really_ wanna act. It just removes your _filter,_ Betty Finn.”

“My filter is my best quality. Can you say the same, Heather Chandler?”

“No. According to _some_ people, I _have_ no redeeming qualities.” She gave a shrug, and moments after she said it, Veronica leaped down from the table.

“Martha, I’m gonna go get lunch! Wanna come?” he quickly said. Martha was taken aback by his fast pace, but hurried over to him regardless.

“Yes please! I’m starving!”

It took Heather a little while to realise that Veronica was in fact escaping an awkward situation, and it took seeing Chandler roll her eyes at him making a run for it to connect the dots. She grimaced, leaping down from her seat to follow him behind, regardless as to whether she thought he was in the right or not.

He just needed a little more time to gather his thoughts, hopefully.

\---

Saturday night came, and driving to a party was an exhilarating feeling that Heather had missed. She didn’t realise she could miss _driving_ to a party, especially when she didn’t have her usual group to accompany her, but the few select people she had chosen to give a ride there could suffice for that loss.

“Woah, that house is _huge,_ ” Martha gasped as they pulled up as close to the house as Heather could park. “Do you think the whole woods is their back garden?”

“No, I imagine there’s a fence,” Betty said. “At least we have somewhere to hide if things get too rowdy and the cops come.” She then let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God we’re here anyway. I can’t stand sitting next to JD any longer.”

“Why not?” JD asked.

“Your legs are like the red fucking sea. Must you shove me and Martha to the sides like this?”

Heather looked over her shoulder to see JD spreading his legs as wide as he could in the back of someone’s car, spilling into space that should be for Martha and Betty’s feet. In the passenger seat, Duke let out a snort.

“Trans men just do that for some reason.”

“It gives me gender euphoria,” JD retorted.

“What, obnoxiously taking up as much room as you can?”

“I leave as little space for women to sit as possible like a _true_ man.”

“JD, you’re sitting in Martha’s seat next time,” Heather told him. JD frowned at her.

“But I _like_ the middle seat.”

“I don’t think anyone else likes you in the middle seat.” She snapped her fingers and gestured for the three of them to move. “Now get out before he forces you to tuck your legs onto the seat.”

Betty, being next to the pavement, was the one who opened the door, with JD and Martha following respectively. Duke left next, and Heather was the last one out due to waiting for a car to drive by before opening her door. Her plan had been to arrive early, as usual, but as it turns out, picking up the three extra party guests had taken more time than expected. Mainly because JD had forgotten to shower and Betty had forced him to take one before leaving, which had set them back quite a bit. It made Heather wonder if, in some strange alternative universe where she and JD were _actually_ dating, would she be able to handle it?

That thought was cut short though when a familiar sounding, but still alien rumble grew louder as they made their way down the patio towards the house. The group stopped and looked to see a motorcycle, one that glistened under the street lights, implying it to be untouched, as if it were brand new, with two figures sitting on it, the taller one being the one holding the handles. Heather wasn’t sure why they both seemed familiar, up until the rumbling stopped and the bike was parked, and the driver removed their helmet. They shook their brown, curly hair out to let it loosen up once again, as did the person sitting behind them, and quite frankly, all they needed was a cigarette in their mouth and a leather jacket to make Heather combust on the spot.

“Oh no, that’s hot.”

“Oh no, that’s pretty.”

Both Heather and Duke spoke at the same time as they stared at Veronica and Mac hop off the motorcycle, and in a moment of painful solidarity, they placed a hand on each other’s shoulder.

“Oh, shit! They actually got a motorcycle!” Betty exclaimed. “Heather, can we go say hi?”

Heather shrugged, confused as to why she was asking at all. Maybe she felt obliged to stick with her due to having given her a ride. “She was your friend first, go for it.”

Both Martha and Betty hurried over to them, and Veronica was surprised to see them there. They were out of earshot when they started talking, and so Heather couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she did notice Mac step to the side to catch either her or Heather’s eye to give them a small wave. Duke waved back, while Heather just smiled. She then glanced at JD, who still stuck by her side.

“Aren’t you going to say hello?” she asked.

“I’ll say hi later. I figured I should walk into the party with you if we wanna look convincing.”

“Good point.”

“But since we’re here.” He inhaled deeply, before yelling, “ _HI VERONICA!_ ”

Veronica looked back towards him in surprise, before calling back a weaker,

“Hey.”

“Okay, it’s cold out, can we go inside?” Duke asked, rubbing her hands up and down her arms.

“Yeah. Let’s go.” She found JD’s hand, to which he immediately flinched. “What?”

“Are your hands always so _cold?_ ”

“They’re as cold as her heart,” Duke quipped. Heather scoffed.

“What, are you going to say it’s melted?”

“No.”

“Fuck you, I’m leaving you.”

“We were never together.”

By then, Heather had already walked ahead, pulling JD along with her. Duke ended up following up behind. They walked through the open door and the glass porch, which JD seemed fascinated by, and then into the foyer. Only a couple of people were in there too, and they were simply moving from one room to another.

“I already feel like I don’t belong here,” JD mumbled, looking around the large room. A chandelier hung from the ceiling and a staircase curled around it in an elegant swirl. Admittedly even fancier than Heather’s own home, but that wasn’t to say she wasn’t used to the sight. Mac’s house was bigger, after all.

“How come?”

“Heather, look at this aesthetic,” he gestured to the shiny, expensive decorations of the large room, “and then at me.” He gestured to himself; he didn’t look any different than he usually did, with the minor exception of a bit of dark eyeshadow to create a smokey effect around his eyeliner.

“Okay, fair. You stand out like a sore thumb.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m kidding. Mostly.” She led the two of them to where she figured the main event was happening, due to the music thumping through the walls and the ajar door revealing guests stumbling around inside. The lighting was a dim purple, one perfect for getting drunk and stupid. They entered the room and took a moment to observe the room. Keith’s kitchen was one of those where there was a window that made it so you could look into it from the room they currently stood in; she assumed it was the living room, but it could have been a spare room for all she knew. And _God_ had she missed the space she once had to roam in her own home.

“Okay, so who’s driving us home?” Heather asked.

“You drove us here, Heather,” Duke pointed out.

“Yeah? And?”

Duke rolled her eyes. “I’m used to being the designated driver. Besides, I’m not in the mood to get too drunk tonight, so I’ll drive.”

“Thank you.” She smiled at her with gratitude.

“You’re welcome; but also, I wanna go find Emmy, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. Have fun.”

She watched Duke wander off with a pang of envy; she wished her status with Mac was clearer so that she could follow, she missed sharing a drink with her, or even a drinking contest. She missed her in _general,_ but especially now. She was always the best thing about the many parties she’d attended in her teen years, she always seemed to enjoy herself far more than Duke did. She always assumed it was because Duke didn’t get drunk as often due to being designated driver, but sometimes she wondered if Duke truly enjoyed herself as much as she or Mac did.

“You actually drive responsibly?” JD asked. “I’m shocked.”

“We would rather not die or have to call our parents to pick us up in an awfully drunken state.”

“Which one would you prefer?”

“Die.”

JD snorted. “Fair enough.”

“Now, speaking of alcohol,” she pulled him towards that window between the living room and the kitchen. Just underneath it was a variety of drinks to pick from, “what type of alcohol do you like? Do you want to mix some?” She grabbed two red cups from a stack and handed one to him.

“Yeah, I brought my own mixer.” He let go of her hand and pulled out a bottle of Mountain Dew. “Uh… just pass me the vodka.”

She skeptically did so, and watched him pour straight vodka into a cup - perhaps filling a third of it - before filling the rest up with the Mountain Dew, which if Heather had to be honest, looked like piss.

“You look disgusted,” JD said. “You never had it before?”

“I’ve never had Mountain Dew before, no.”

JD gasped in dismay and shoved his bottle back into his trenchcoat, then handed her the cup. “Okay, drink.”

“Ew, no.”

“You still owe me.”

“For what?”

“I dunno, for being mean.”

“I’m dating you, isn’t that enough?”

“Aw, what are we, a chicken?” He smirked at her, and when she scowled at him, he mocked her more with a chicken call.

“Grow up,” she muttered, taking the cup from him. She hesitated for a moment, grimacing at the yellow liquid sloshing around in the cup. However, one look at JD’s smug expression was enough for her to suck it up and swallow a gulp of it.

It was _vile._

“ _God_ that’s awful,” she gagged, shoving the cup back into his hand. The vodka was for once the best thing about it, probably due to its strong flavour muting whatever caffeinated shit she had just tasted.

“You have no taste.”

“Then why did I get a mouthful of battery acid?”

“Exactly, get your tastebuds checked.”

“They’re working _fine,_ ” she retorted, pouring herself a glass of prosecco. JD’s lip curled in disgust.

“No they are most definitely not.” JD side-stepped away from her as her cup filled up. Heather just rolled her eyes and let the sharp taste slither down her throat; it had been a long time since she had drunk alcohol to enjoy it and not to forget unfortunate events happening in her life. It was nice, returning to the loosened feeling of a party where she could let her worries go for a bit. Even if there would be the looming figure of Veronica being in the same building as her, she wouldn’t let that get in the way of her having a good time. Very few things could right now, such as-

“Hey there.”

A deep voice sounding so close to her in the midst of distance chatter made her jump. She spun around and came face to face with a boy, taller than her and built like your average football player. She was sure he was one of the guys she chased away from JD earlier this week, but she couldn’t ponder on it for so long, since she was more focused with how close he was standing.

“Um- excuse me?” She tried to keep her usual tone up, hoping he didn’t catch it quiver ever so slightly.

“I was just wondering, would you,” he took a moment to clear his throat, as if to sound charming, “like this dance?”

The line was so corny and felt strange hearing coming out of a stranger’s mouth, especially when more than anything, she just felt uncomfortable. When he held his hand out, she backed up against the drinks table, not that it left much space between them when it did. When he noticed she backed up, he didn’t respect it, and instead moved closer, his knee grazing her own. She froze up at the feeling, gripping the table behind her and completely forgetting to reply.

“Her dance is taken,” a more familiar voice spoke up, letting her relax. JD walked up to them, appearing calm but eyeing the guy dangerously. He finally backed away, not because he was intimidated by him, but he certainly was surprised.

“You’re actually here?”

“Yeah? I’m her boyfriend, of course I came with her.”

It was strange hearing JD say that out loud, even if she knew it was a lie, it still brought her some form of comfort. The boy took him in, then looked back to Heather, before muttering something under his breath and sinking back into the crowd. Heather let out a sigh of relief.

“Thanks,” she breathed.

“Do guys always do that?” JD asked. She shrugged.

“Yeah, a lot. Most guys here are here for a hookup, and I’m the main prize, usually.”

“Even though, at least as far as they’re concerned, you’re not single?”

“Do you think they care?”

“I guess not.”

Heather huffed, taking another sip of her drink. “I used to be a lot better at handling them on my own.”

JD frowned. “It’s okay if it’s more difficult now.”

“I’m trying to tell myself that.” She shifted uncomfortably, not wanting this conversation to interrupt what was supposed to be a fun night. She turned to him and smirked. “How fast can you finish your drinks.”

JD blinked at her. “Uh…”

“Let’s find out. Do you have the same amount in your cup as me?” She peeked into his cup and saw that he had a little less than her, but nothing she couldn’t get by. “Okay, cool. Now chug it.”

“You want me to waste this perfectly good drink?”

“It’s an awful drink, it won’t be missed. Now _go._ ”

Despite his protests, JD obeyed and the two of them gulped their drinks down as fast as they could. Heather was the first to get to the bottom of her cup, and she proudly wiped her mouth and smirked at JD while she watched him swallow the last of his acidic mixture. He looked so sure of himself when he looked back at her as soon as he finished, and was shocked to see she had long beat him.

“What the hell.”

“Don’t feel too bad.” She patted his chest. “Few people can do better than me.”

“Implying there are people who can do better than that.”

“Yes. Mac can, she can hardly taste alcohol compared to us.” She was about to refill her cup, when a familiar tune came onto the speakers. Not quite Queen or Abba, but _Heart of Glass_ was still a tune she was very fond of. Usually she’d rush to the dance floor and find a dance partner, but those chances had been shot down by JD guarding her. Not that she was ungrateful, but she missed when she was comfortable dancing with whoever without worrying about where their hands were going to wander.

But in looking at the dance floor growing as more guests began to flood in, she couldn’t help but let the envy take her over, and with none of her friends around to dance with her, she tossed her and JD’s cup in the trash, even though he looked as if he were about to pick a second drink too, and grabbed his sleeve.

“You owe me a dance,” she said as she pulled him towards where most of the dancing was happening. He skidded to a halt.

“Since when?”

“Since before when you said my dance is taken,” she said with a grin. He stared at her.

“I don’t dance.”

“Everybody dances at some point.”

“I cannot dance.”

Heather rolled her eyes. “Then I’ll teach you.”

JD snorted. “Seriously?”

“Yes.” She found a spot in the room where not many people were likely to bump into them, turned around and took hold of his hands. He seemed surprised.

“Oh, you actually are?”

“How hard can it be to teach somebody to dance?”

“Very.” She pulled him slightly closer, and he stumbled. “You realise how much taller these shoes make me out to be?”

“How tall are you actually?” She eyed him curiously. He always wore boots that were definitely heavy looking, but she wasn’t sure just how much taller they made him.

“5’8. You’d be looking down at me right now.”

“Well, I’m 5’6 without my heels on.”

JD blinked at her. “You’re wearing _six inch heels?_ ”

“Yes.”

“How are you not falling over?”

“If you dance with me I’ll show you.”

JD gave her an uncertain glance, but eventually hesitantly secured his grip on her hands. She grinned smugly, and then tugged him even closer until their chests were touching.

“Hope you don’t mind, I’m going to have to keep this romantic.”

“I don’t know how romantic I can make this.”

“Can’t be that hard. Now watch my footing.” He obeyed. “When I move my left leg forward, you move yours backwards, then vice versa.”

She demonstrated, and his footing was clunky at first. Sometimes too slow, sometimes too fast. She tried to keep them moving to the beat of the song, and eventually he sort of got the hang of it, but was still incredibly nervous.

“You know, if this is too daunting, we can stop,” Heather whispered to him. JD rolled his eyes.

“I’m just showing you how much of a terrible dancer I am so you know to never do this in public with me again.” He leaned back a little when she stepped towards him. “And I know we’re supposed to look like a couple doing this, but do you have to get this close?”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to get this close if you just learned how to dance,” Heather said with a shrug, before surprising him by spinning around gracefully and (thankfully) landing against his shoulder and arm that quickly came up to catch her hip. She was sure she missed being held like this a lot, because she wanted to do it again.

‘Flawless logic,’ JD muttered. Heather just snickered, taking their current position to look around the room to see if anyone was looking their way. A few heads were turned, and their expressions were envious towards JD. Other than that, no one was coming towards her to ask her to dance. She hadn’t felt so free in a long time.

She swirled back around and faced JD again, and after a few more moments of dragging JD around the dance floor and laughing each time he stumbled or tripped and having to catch him when he did. He was right, he was _not_ a good dancer, but that didn't mean she wasn't having fun, or that he wouldn't crack a smile here and there. It made Heather forget that they were only doing this for show, and her questioning if it really was for show anymore instead of genuine fun.

They powered through a couple more songs before JD stopped mid-spin to cradle his rib cage.

"Shit," he hissed. Heather let go of his hand.

"What's the matter?"

"Chest pain," he grumbled. "It's normal, don't worry, but can we stop dancing?"

"Yeah, okay." She led him away to the side of the room so he could lean against the wall.

"I probably shouldn't do too much physical activity in a binder," he said in a quiet voice. Heather blinked.

"A what?"

"A binder. Something I'm wearing to flatten my chest. It's pretty tight because of it."

"Doesn't that hurt?"

"If I wear it for more than eight hours then yes, and unfortunately that's something I do fairly often." He massaged the area that hurt and sighed. "So, it explains why my chest randomly hurts sometimes."

"Nice moves out there JD!" The voice of Betty made them both look up, seeing her, Martha and Duke walking over to them. "I didn't know you liked to dance."

There was vague sarcasm to her tone that made JD roll his eyes. "I don't."

"I disagree," Betty said. "Why'd you stop?"

"Because I was dancing in a binder."

"You dumbass," she said. "Well, Martha, Heather and I were going to find a quiet place to sit for a bit, you can join us if you want."

"I think I oughtta."

"You wanna come too, Heather?" Duke offered. "Saves you wandering the party alone."

Well, ouch, that was one way to put it. was a bit harsh. Unfortunately it was also true, unless she wanted to go and spend the rest of her night with the stuck up kids who probably visit this house regularly.

“Yeah, sure, why not,” she said with a shrug. She could see a couple of people looking her way, wondering why she was conversing with such people, but she told herself to ignore it. “Should we get some drinks first?”

“Can I get water if we do?” Martha asked. "I would rather not ever drink alcohol… ever again."

"Last time you enjoyed it a little too much," Duke pointed out as they made their way back to the drinks table.

"No! I… I didn't _enjoy_ it, I just-"

"Is Martha secretly a party girl?" Heather whispered to JD, except she made herself loud enough for the group to hear.

"No! Parties aren't my thing! Well, I don't _mind_ them, they can be exciting, but being at the centre of attention is nerve-wracking, and-"

"In fairness, sweetie, you seemed to _like_ the attention you got that night," Betty said. Martha looked at the ground sheepishly.

"It was a nice change, I suppose. Validating, almost."

"When we sit down can we please talk about Martha's secret party girl tendencies? I'm very intrigued," Heather said as she grabbed a bottle of raspberry flavoured vodka.

"Depends on what she would like to talk about. Also pour me a cup of that?" Betty asked.

"Sure."

After everyone got their respective drinks, with Duke and Martha choosing some simple soda to drink (which also made Heather realise she hadn't seen Duke drink soda in a very long time) they left the main room and found a quieter, empty room further down a hallway leading from the foyer, which had also since filled up since they had arrived, probably due to the living room being pretty full already.

The room they settled in was small and had a vague wood-like scent to it that made Heather feel relaxed. There were just enough seats for them all, with Betty, Martha and Duke sitting on the longer sofa and JD sitting on the smaller one.

Heather could have been sensible and sit on the other end of that sofa, or even just sit on the floor, but no, she was riled up from all the dancing and the cup of prosecco she had drank earlier and decided that it would be the peak of comedy to settle next to JD, but face towards him with her legs hooked over the arm rest he was squished against, essentially caging him in his seat.

"Why? We're not even in public anymore," he said, deadpanning at her.

"You seem to have forgotten that I am a little shit," she chided.

"Yeah, looks like I did."

"That sounds like progress to me!" Martha chirped, clapping her hands.

"She's still a little shit though," Duke said before sipping her sprite.

"You're meant to be on _my_ side!" Heather whined.

"Maybe I'm on my own side, Heather."

"Speaking of sides, JD, is your side okay?" Betty asked.

"Yeah, feels fine now. Just a small jab."

As the two of them made small talk about binding, Heather only grew more curious about… a lot of things.

"Okay, please tell me if this is an insensitive question-" she spoke up.

"Oh no," Betty, JD and Duke all said in unison.

"-But how did all of your voices change? Were they always like that?"

"Heather, you know my voice has _never_ changed, it has always sounded like this," Duke said.

"Well, yeah, but why didn't it _drop?_ "

"A lot of reasons," Duke sighed. "Mainly because I took hormone blockers before puberty started, so I never went through my possible male puberty."

" _Possible_ male puberty?"

"Yeah. Fun fact, Heather, my sex is actually very ambiguous, nobody was sure what gender I was going to be. They guessed male, and it turned out to be wrong, and so that's why I take estrogen pills to this day."

"I… I'm sorry, _ambiguous?_ "

"You're going to break her, Heather," Betty warned.

"Nah, it's cool," she said, crossing one leg over the other as she leaned back. "If this mess ever flies over and we end up together, she can see what's down there for herself."

Heather should not have been drinking when she said that, because she almost spat it back out onto JD. Everyone laughed at the sight.

"Okay, Jesus, um, JD, what about you?" She moved the topic along quickly, because she did _not_ need to think any inappropriate thoughts about Duke.

"Hormones. I inject them."

"Just… random hormones?"

"No, you bimbo, testosterone. That one that makes men throw temper tantrums all the time."

"This is the second time you've called me a bimbo."

"And I'll do it again."

"Wait, so, taking testosterone makes your voice drop?"

"Yeah, it puts you through a second puberty. Why do you think I still have acne?"

"Huh, that's interesting." She turned to Betty. "So, does estrogen make your voice go higher?"

"No," she replied in a low, gruff voice that caught her off guard. "You've heard my lower range before."

"I _forgot._ "

"Yeah, well, you can't _undo_ puberty. This is years of vocal training speaking."

"Ah, I see."

“Any more questions?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Okay, glad you asked nothing dumb,” Betty said before taking a swig. “Oh, but now I’m curious, what’s the _worst_ thing you’ve ever said? Or done, either or is fine.”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m just curious. We can go in a circle so you don’t feel alone.”

“Hm. Alright.” Heather paused to think, and unfortunately for her, there were _many_ options to choose from. “Can I exclude… recent events? Because we all know that one.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, hm…” She clicked her tongue rhythmically. “That’s a difficult decision.”

“Questions that should never be answered with “that’s a difficult decision”,” JD quipped. She slapped his arm lightly and continued to think.

“What about when you tricked Veronica into writing a love letter from Ram and giving it to me and then humiliating at the party that note invited me to?” Martha said with her hand raised. It wasn’t bitter, just a neutral observation that made everyone turn away and sip their drinks while Heather just grimaced.

“I mean… yeah, that’s probably up there.”

“That’s cheating, think of one yourself,” Betty told her.

“Okay, okay.” Struggling to think of what to pick, she glanced to Duke, wondering if doing so would help. Fortunately - or unfortunately - it did. “Hm. Speaking of Ram, it would be- oh, wait, Martha, don’t you have a crush on him?” She stopped herself.

“Hm? Oh, no… not anymore.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah, what?” Duke turned around and shot her a weird look. “Haven’t you liked him since kindergarten?”

“I did, but some time ago Veronica told me about some of the, um, _things_ he’s done, and I guess it just… put me off.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s for the best,” Heather said. “In that case, having sex with Ram in Sophomore year for the first time really stung for Heather and Heather.”

“Yeah, it _did,_ ” Duke said.

“You’re over it now!”

“I am, but it was still a dick move.”

“Wait, why did it sting?” Betty asked.

“Ram - and Kurt - were dicks to us in middle school, and for Heather and Heather, elementary too,” Duke explained. “We all hated him, and then she slept with him, and we all got into an argument.”

“I don’t know if it’s the _worst_ thing I’ve ever done,” Heather said. “But it definitely caused a lot of conflict between us.” She turned to JD. “Okay, now you.”

“I knocked a kid’s teeth out in middle school because he was making fart noises in class,” JD answered almost immediately, as if he had it ready. “I transferred schools the next day, or at least, I don’t remember spending any more time in that school. Could just be gaps in my memory.”

“I felt that,” Heather murmured, causing them both to snicker amongst themselves. “Okay, moving on. Martha-” She paused, hand pointing at her before she gritted her teeth the longer she stared at her. “Mmm… Betty.”

“Hey, why doesn’t Martha get a turn?”

“What _wrong_ has she ever done in her life? Look at her, she’s wearing a pink unicorn sweater to a party with alcohol!”

“I’m going to choose to take this as a compliment,” Martha said.

“Well, it’s certainly not an insult. But really, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, stolen a gummy sweet from a sweet store?”

Martha gasped. “I would never!”

“Well, get on my level, I shoplifted a whole playset of dinosaurs when I was six.”

“That’s impressive,” Betty commented.

“Thanks. I got away with it.”

“Even more so.”

“Wait, wait! I thought of something!” Martha raised her hand again and waved it in the air. “In elementary school I broke our teacher’s vase by accident and blamed it on Heather.”

Duke froze, her jaw dropping.

“It was _you_ who told her it was me?” She turned to glare at her, and Martha shrank in her seat. “Martha, do you know how much _recess_ I lost because of that fucking vase? I had to write a letter _apologising_ for something I never did!”

“I know, I’m sorry! The guilt has been eating at me for years!”

“ _Maybe that’s a good thing-_ ”

“Okay, okay girls, I think we can both agree that this is nothing compared to when I kicked a soccer ball at our teacher’s face and blamed it on Veronica.”

The three of them burst out into laughter at the memory, while Heather and JD just exchanged a glance.

“Looks like they have issues with taking accountability,” Heather commented.

“But that’s not the worst thing I’ve ever done,” Betty continued. “That would be when-”

“You brought a tattoo gun to a party to tattoo drunken kids?” Heather guessed.

“I was _also_ drunk, and, well, okay yes that is up there, but we all know that one.” She flicked her wrist dismissively. “No, I have a more interesting one.”

“Which is?”

“I stabbed someone once.”

“You _what?_ ”

“That’s very misleading, Betty!” Martha scolded. “Technically, yes, she stabbed someone, with a _pallet knife_ on _accident._ ”

“Not my fault he kept pushing me and tripped into the knife,” Betty said with a shrug. “He was fine, by the way. Just bled a lot and had to get a couple of stitches. Besides, he was being a dick.”

“Okay, good entry, now Heather, it’s your turn,” Heather said, looking at her.

“I’m a Heather, this should be easy.” She leaned back against the sofa and hummed, foot bouncing as she went through what was likely a list. Though most of her wrongdoings were down to carrying out Heather’s deeds, she was by no mean innocent. “Oh yeah. So in junior year there was this boy that I “liked”,” she said with quotations. “We all know now that I actually didn’t because I’m a lesbian, and that just makes this story worse.”

“Oh, I think I know what you’re referring to,” Heather said with a snicker.

“Oh no, what did you do to him?” Betty asked, leaning forward.

“Did nothing to him. I had competition, and he clearly liked this one other girl. I wish I could say she was mean or horrible, but she wasn’t. No one particularly well-liked either, just kind of there. And in a sad moment of need for dominance, I-” She paused to purse her lips, a weird blend of a wince and a laugh escaping through her nose. “I spread the rumour that they were cousins.”

“Heather, holy shit.”

“That’s mean,” JD said dryly. “But in a weirdly amusing way. Did you ever get the guy?”

“No, they both had to move schools.”

“Oh, now that’s just sad.”

“That’s _so_ sad!” Martha frowned at her. “ _Both_ of them had to move? You didn’t even like him!”

“I mean, I _thought_ I liked him because he was conventionally attractive and vaguely nice. I don’t know, I was getting desperate to feel some sort of attraction, and then it turned into a sick game of me playing _Sweet Home Alabama_ on a guitar for them at a party.”

“In fairness, that was hilarious,” Heather said.

“Still mean. Stop looking proud of yourself,” Betty scolded. Duke’s vague smile dropped.

“Look, if I ever meet them again, I promise to apologise. Besides, I’m sure they got together once they were out of Westerburg’s view. Maybe they’re happy now.”

“I don’t think you will ever see them again. You chased them away. Now you have to live with the guilt.”

“I think that’s fair.” Duke shrugged. “But enough of reminiscing about our past terrible actions. What’s everybody’s favourite animal? Mine’s a tie between bats and axolotls.”

“That’s a weird question,” Betty said.

“It’s a simple question, now answer it.”

“Okay, okay. Mine is turtles and tortoises.”

“Ponies!” Martha chirped.

“Komodo dragons,” JD said.

“Uh… um…” Heather _did_ have an answer, but it would be exposing her unlikely interests.

“Aw, too scared to say _cockroaches?_ ” JD teased. She scorned at him, while Betty snorted.

“Wait, seriously?”

“It’s not!” she snapped. “It’s… it’s millipedes.”

Betty burst out laughing, and Heather for the first time blessed her newly cut bangs’ ability in hiding her flushed face.

“Even I didn’t know that,” Duke said, snickering.

“Well, I think that’s lovely! That’s a very underappreciated animal,” Martha said with a smile. Heather, touched by her unconditional support, pouted.

“They _are._ They’ve just got so many legs to give you a thousand hugs at once,” she said. “Well, that’s a myth. Despite their name, they do not have a thousand legs.”

“Also, Heather, to give a thousand hugs, they would have to have _two_ thousand legs,” Duke pointed out.

“Shh. Don’t give me math lessons.”

“I think Heather should share everything she knows about insects with us,” JD said. “She’s basically vibrating with knowledge.”

“No I’m not!”

“Okay, no, but your leg is bouncing a lot.” He rested his cheek in his palm. “And I think it would be funny watching you recite a hundred insect facts.”

Heather was going to refuse, but the more she thought about it, she hadn’t gone off on a tangent about insects in a long, long time. She was sure even Mac was unconvinced she was still interested in them since she hadn’t brought them up in literal years. Maybe JD’s statement had some truth to it and that she was holding back a lot of things she wanted to share.

“Okay, fine,” she said. “But someone else has to rant about something that interests them too after me.”

“Martha can do it,” Betty volunteered.

“Huh? About what?”

“Your interest in murder mysteries? I dunno.”

Martha cleared her throat, brushing some of her black curls behind her ear. “It’s not a _huge_ interest…”

“Yes it is.”

“Okay, I’ll start us off strong then,” Heather said, cracking her knuckles. “So, did you know that after mating season, worker bees kick drones out - those are male bees - out of the hive, where they will likely starve or freeze without the hive because winter comes afterwards and as they’re not workers, they’re just extra mouths to feed?”

“That’s so sad,” Martha lamented.

“Yeah. Fun fact, after mating season, you can find a pile of dead male bees under the hive because of it…”

She was able to ramble on about weird facts about different types of insects for God knows how long, until her mouth became dry and alcohol certainly wasn’t helping with that problem. She passed it onto Martha, who went into surprisingly great depths into unsolved murder cases. She started out with Jack the Ripper since it was the most well known and her theories on how he was most likely a doctor and possibly even a woman, followed by The Eight Day Bride, and finishing off with the Axeman of New Orleans, which was particularly gruesome, but morbidly interesting. Though, it never stopped being weird hearing it from Martha’s mouth.

“And she _survived?_ ” Heather blinked in disbelief.

“Yeah! She almost got killed by an axe, then gave birth to a child sometime after and lived.”

“That’s really impressive, good on her,” Duke said as she tipped her cup as high as it could go. “And as interesting as that all was, I’m out of Coke.”

“I ran out ages ago,” Heather said, tipping her cup upside down.

“You want me to go get some more? I kinda need the bathroom anyway, so.” Duke held her hand out so that Heather could hand her her empty cup.

“Yes please.”

“Okay, who else wants their cups filled?”

“I think everyone,” Betty said. “You can’t carry all of them; I’ll just fill up mine and Martha’s.”

“Good idea.”

The pair of them left with everyone’s cups, leaving the rest of the group waiting patiently, and Heather contemplating why she could have been so cruel to anyone in this room, and how they could have given her a second chance at all.

\---

“They said they were _probably_ coming, so I don’t know if they’re actually coming or not,” Mara said as she kneeled on the bay window, looking out the window with her feet kicking behind her.

“Probably means most likely,” Veronica said. “So I imagine they’ll likely be here.”

“But it’s been a while since the party started!”

“Maybe they’re late,” Veronica suggested.

“Or maybe they’re not- oh! Nevermind, I see them.” She pointed to two figures, one small and one tall, making their ways up the pathway to the door. “I’ll go meet them at the door!”

“Should I stay here?”

“Yeah, I’ll be right back!”

Veronica waited in his spot for a few moments, until Heather returned with two boys. One was dressed more proper, like he had made an effort to look nice, while the shorter one seemed to throw on whatever.

“Okay! So you both know of Veronica, but you don’t know her personally. So this is Veronica,” she gestured to him. “Ronnie, this is Hale and Diego.”

“Hi,” Veronica gave a timid wave.

“Hello! You’re the new Heather, right?” Diego stepped forward boldly.

“Well, um, not sure if I count as the _new_ Heather anymore, since it’s been half a year.” He blinked. “Huh, that’s quite a while.”

“Point being, you’re the most recent one,” Diego said. “It’s nice to meet you!”

Mara sat next to him on the bay window, with Diego and Hale sitting on the other side of her.

“You too. Glad to know there are some chill guys on Heather’s soccer team,” Veronica said.

“And it’s good to know you’re a chill Heather,” Hale said. “Though, we did meet Heather Duke the other day, and she was pretty cool.”

“Heather is _awesome!_ If she weren’t gay, I’d probably fall for her,” Diego said laughing. Veronica blinked at him in surprise.

“Wait, you know she’s…”

“Oh yeah. They know Heather and I are dating. They’re not dicks, don’t worry,” Heather reassured him.

“Duh. I’m gay and he’s queer,” Hale said.

“Oh.” Veronica huffed. “Well, uh, same here. I’m bi.”

Next to him, Heather let out a hum.

“Guys, do you know what polyamory is?” she asked, her legs kicking again as if excited. Hale and Veronica both looked at her in confusion.

“No?” they both said.

“I do! That’s when you have multiple partners, right?”

“Exactly! So, um, you know how I’m dating Heather?”

“Yeah?” They both nodded.

“Well,” Heather hooked her arm around Veronica’s, “I’m also dating Veronica.”

“Awww! Really!” Diego cooed, smushing his cheeks with his hands while Veronica felt a wave of shyness hit him. “That’s adorable!”

“That’s very sweet,” Hale agreed.

“Well, thank you, but, uh, Heather, I have never heard the word ‘polyamory’ in my life,” Veronica said.

“Oh, yeah, I heard it the other week. It’s literally just what we’re doing, turns out there’s a word for it!” Heather said with a smile. “Turns out we’re not freaks, people like us just aren’t spoken about.”

“Well, that’s good to know.” He then looked around the room. The music was loud and so were everyone’s voices, and nobody was shooting them weird looks or whispering to one another, so nobody overheard anything that they had just said, but with the amount of people who could pry, he grew worried. “Though, maybe save the gay talk for sometime when we’re not around so many people.”

“She makes a good point,” Hale said, which made Veronica make a quick decision.

“Though, uh before we do that, I’m also non-binary,” he said in a low voice. “So you can use whatever pronouns for me, you don’t have to just use she and her.” _Please don’t just use she and her._

Though in saying that, Veronica instantly started to regret it. He was still coming to terms with his identity, and throwing it around like candy was something he had actively been trying to avoid. He had just assumed that because two people were gay, that they’d be accepting of such an outlandish concept too, and-

“Oh, you too?” Diego’s face lit up. “I’m genderqueer!”

“Huh?” Veronica stared at him in bewilderment. “You are?”

“Yeah!”

“Oh, uh, well I’m bigender,” he said. “What pronouns do _you_ use?”

“I use he/him and they/them, but I also kinda wish there was some outlandish set of pronouns I can use to really disconnect my presentation for everyone.”

“That would be pretty neat,” Veronica chuckled. “When we’re out of everyone’s view we can talk about this more. I’d… like to know more about your gender, it would help a lot with mine.”

“How long have you known for?”

“Literally for a couple of weeks.”

“Oh, a newbie!” He reached across Heather and patted him on the head. “Then I’d love to have a nice gender talk with ya.” He sat back in his place and cleared his throat. “But yeah, moving away from that, you started the Kurt and Ram pegging rumour, right?”

Veronica snorted. “Yeah, that was me.”

“Well, I started the rumour that they got fucked by Heather,” Diego said proudly, while patting Hale on the shoulder. “Hale helped.”

“Wait, so Heather didn’t start it?”

“She asked us to, so it wouldn’t get traced back to her or somethin’,” Diego said with a shrug. “Either way, it was the best locker room talk I’ve ever had.”

“You have lousy competition,” Hale said.

“Either way, it was fun.”

The pair of them grew on Veronica pretty quickly. He could see why Heather would want to invite them both; Diego was a lot, but in a good way. He liked to carry the conversation and didn’t care about getting too loud, and was generally a lot of fun. Hale balanced him out with how laid-back he was. He didn’t talk much, but his few quips and deep insights were enough.

Eventually though, Diego started eyeing the many cups in the other guests’ hands, and Veronica quickly got the hint.

“Do you want any drinks, by the way?” he asked. “There’s beer and vodka or just some soft drinks over there.”

“I’ll take a beer!” Diego exclaimed.

“I’ll have whatever soda’s there with a tiny bit of vodka, please?” Hale asked.

“You already know what I like, babe,” Heather said with a grin. Veronica sighed fondly.

“Let me guess, flavoured vodka?”

“Yep!”

“I’ll see what they have.”

“Can you carry all those cups at once?” Hale questioned. “Do you need any help?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine. I need the bathroom anyway, so I’ll get the drinks on the way back.”

“If you’re sure.”

Veronica hurried off to find the bathroom, though it was hard to find in such a big house. He ended up having to ask somebody if they knew where it was, and he directed him to a corridor lurking under the spiral staircase. He found the room he was looking for upon hearing a flushing sound and somebody immediately stepping out of the room. Veronica prayed silently that in those couple of seconds, he washed his hands, but it was very likely that he didn’t. Grossed out by the thought, he touched the doorknob through his sleeve before spraying it down with a disinfectant he found, quickly did his business and washed his hands, and let the next person waiting outside in. Only, the person she opened the door to was a face she was planning to avoid all night.

“Oh.” Veronica pursed his lips. “Hey.”

Heather Duke blinked up at him, and Veronica half expected her to just shove past him. Instead, she seemed to relax.

“Hi.”

The two of them stood awkwardly in the hallway, both looking around as they awaited for the other person to speak. Eventually, it was Heather who spoke.

“So… why did you do it?”

Veronica’s brow knitted in confusion. “Do what?”

“Keying her parents’ car,” she said a little sheepishly. “Why’d you do it?”

“Oh…” Veronica stared at his feet, clasping his hands together. “I… I still care about her, you know.”

Interrupting them were a couple more people needing the bathroom, and so they moved further down to the quieter end of the hallway.

“I can be mad at her and still care about her,” Veronica clarified. “You already knew that.”

Heather’s gaze softened.

“I know.”

Veronica frowned. “Then why ask?”

Heather folded her arms and shrugged. The two of them fell into silence again, before they both grew sick of dodging the bullet only to bump into one another, and both blurted out,

“I’m sorry.” They stared at each other.

“Why are _you_ sorry?” Veronica asked.

“I… well, I’m not sorry for what I said, I still think I’m right,” Veronica willed himself to laugh at that, “but… I don’t want to villainise you, and I’m sorry that I did. You’re just trying to do the right thing, and doing the right thing isn’t so easy. You’re not trying to hurt anyone. I… I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

“No, no, Heather, it’s fine,” Veronica quickly said. “You’re frustrated, and I get why. You’re trapped between us both, and I know exactly how that feels. I was trapped between Heather and Heather when they were arguing too, and it’s a lot to take in, and you’re already dealing with so much, and…” He let out a loud sigh, rubbing his temples. “I’m sorry.”

Heather smiled at him with gratitude. “I’m sorry too. As in, I’m still sorry for what I _did_ do wrong.”

Veronica winced regretfully. “Heather, I… I don’t care about that. I mean, it would have been nice for you to tell us but… I know you were going to and that you were just waiting for the right time and it’s… it’s complicated. I’m really not mad, I don’t think you’re a cheater, I was just deflecting.”

Heather raised her brows in intrigue.

“Because you think I’m right?”

Veronica bit his lip. He still didn’t feel ready to confront those feelings quite yet.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said a lot over the past few days,” he confessed. “It’s all I can think about, actually.”

He fully expected Heather to push on, he knew she was smart enough to see right through his vague reply, but to his surprise, she just smiled at him sympathetically.

“Do you wanna talk about it later?”

“I’ve been avoiding doing that, but… I probably should,” he nodded slowly. “Are we good, then?”

“If you want to be,” Heather said. Veronica nodded fervently, earning him a warm smile and a hug.

“Your prank was wonderfully evil,” Heather whispered into his ear. Veronica snickered.

“Jealous you didn’t participate?”

“Very.”

They parted just as the line to the bathroom disappeared, with the last person going inside.

“I ought to go to the bathroom though,” Heather said. “I’ll see you around? I’m assuming you’re hanging out with Emmy.”

“Yeah, she introduced me to Hale and Diego.”

“Oh, she mentioned inviting them. Yeah, they’re pretty cool.”

“They are. They’re also waiting for me to get their drinks, so I better go do that.” They both started walking down the hallway, with Veronica leaving Heather behind at the bathroom door. “I’ll see you later, Heather.”

“See you, V.”

He was able to walk away taking a big sigh of relief, feeling at least one weight lifted off of his shoulder. It was already bad enough carrying the argument between him and Chandler around, he had hated thinking about distancing himself from Duke as well. But with things fixed and an offer to help him figure things out without being alone, he felt like he could stop letting his thoughts plague what was supposed to be a fun night out, one that he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

He made his way back to the drinks and gathered four cups, only to realise that Hale may have been right and that carrying them all, especially when full, may be quite tricky. He had planned on carrying them by pinching the tops, but that may just end up in a lot of spillage. He could always just get two drinks and come back for the last two, though.

“Having trouble?”

Hearing Betty’s voice just behind him made him jump. He turned around and saw her holding five empty cups, each of them stacked into a pile of two and a pile of three.

“I thought I could carry four cups at once. I was wrong.”

“Do you want me to carry two for you?”

“Yes please. But what about yours?”

“I’m waiting for Heather to get back so she can carry some of them.”

“You’ve been sitting with Heather?”

“Yeah, uh, sorry,” she scratched the back of her head. “I would have offered you to join, but I know you two had a feud the other day-”

“Oh, no, I mean, we did, but I just spoke to her,” Veronica said, nodding towards the direction he just came from. “We’re okay now. We’re going to talk about it later.”

“Oh! That’s good then.”

“So, who else have you been hanging out with?” Veronica huffed, eyeing her large collection of cups. “You’re more popular than me, it seems. Where have you been all evening? I haven’t seen you since I first got here.”

“Oh, I’ve been camping out with Martha and JD and Heather…” She drummed her fingers against a cup. “...And Heather.”

“And… Heather?”

“Yeah, Heather offered for her to join us, so we’ve been hanging out all night.”

“All five of you?” Veronica said quietly as those five specific names buzzed around in her head like the loudest pest that couldn’t be killed. “When did this happen?”

“About half an hour ago, maybe-?”

“No, I mean…” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Betty, all week you’ve been weirdly okay with Heather. I can understand Martha, because she’s too nice to even give her a glare, and apparently JD and her have some sort of weird friendship going on, but _you?_ ” He stared at her in disbelief. “You _hate_ her! I sat through you telling me why you felt betrayed that I-” he stopped mid-sentence, in realising there were many people around that could hear them. He pulled Betty to the side, further away from the drinks table and lowered his voice, “-That I fell in love with her,” he continued. “But now you’re suddenly just _okay_ with her? What happened?”

Betty’s gaze softened. “Well… I _did_ feel that way, and I think I was justified, but…” She sighed. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. Last week she came to Martha and I and apologised.”

Veronica froze. “She did?”

“Yeah. She was at our doorstep, I wanna say begging for forgiveness, but she wasn’t even doing that. It was just… an apology.” She shrugged. “It was a lot more heartfelt than I thought she could ever get, so it was a shock, at least for me. For Martha I think it was a relief - she forgave her on the spot. You know how she is.” A fond smile creeped onto her lips at the thought of her.

“But you didn’t,” Veronica prompted.

“No… I never forgive people after an apology, no matter how good it may be,” she said. “It’s why I didn’t tell you straight away. There was no point when I hadn’t found it in my heart to forgive her yet. I wanted to wait to see if she kept her word, and I thought it would take so much longer. But hey, when you’re willing to hold hands with JD to keep people off his back, you can get me on board.”

Veronica sank into his shoulders. “You don’t think there’s any… ulterior motive?” he asked cautiously. “Not that… I don’t _want_ there to be, I just…”

“I don’t know, Veronica,” Betty said. “You know her better than I do. All I’m really saying here is…” She bit the inside of her cheek as she searched for the right words. “I think, at the very least, I _have_ gotten to know the side of her that you love. At least, a bit of it.” She smiled wistfully. “She’s more human to me now, and that’s all I wanted to see. Do I think she has a long way to go? Sure, but she’s clearly _trying._ That’s so much more than I can say about so many other people like her.”

Veronica swallowed thickly.

“Do you forgive her?”

The pause wasn’t long, but it felt so drawn out.

“I think so.” Betty leaned forward a bit. “Do you?”

He scoffed. “It was never about me.”

“You’re trans too.”

“I was never mad for me.”

“Then who are you mad for?”

Veronica remained silent, because he couldn’t think of an answer.

“Betty! Do you still have mine and Heather’s cup?”

Duke’s voice growing closer made Veronica snap his head up. Heather stopped in front of them both, shooting Veronica a friendly smile before holding her hand out to Betty, who gave her the cups that were just a stack of two.

“I better go get everyone’s drinks,” Betty said. “You sure you don’t want to sit with us, by the way?”

“Hm? Oh, no, I’m sitting with Mara, it’s okay,” he quickly said. “And… I’ll probably make things awkward.”

Betty and Duke exchanged a look, before shooting him one last smile as they walked away. Veronica forced a smile back, but his brief good mood from making up with Heather had only been brought down lower than before. It _shouldn’t_ have been low, he should be happy that Betty, out of all people, was on good terms with _Heather Chandler,_ and that was the whole problem. He should be fucking overjoyed.

Isn’t that what he had wanted?

\---

“...And I looked down, and saw he was peeing in my hand,” JD finished. “I was trying to peel his shedded skin off, and that’s how he thanks me.”

“That’s disgusting,” Duke gagged, covering her mouth. “Whenever I have to clean up Bear’s dirt I _have_ to sanitise my hands twice.”

“Even if your hand doesn’t touch it?” Martha asked.

“Also, _twice?_ ” Betty added.

“I know it’s stupid, but I feel like my hand is still dirty if I don’t double coat them,” she explained. “And yes, even if I didn’t actually touch it, because I still had to pick it up.”

“I suppose that would be pretty gross,” Heather said.

“It _is._ ”

For a brief moment, the group fell quiet as their current conversation ran dry, up until Betty spoke up to move it onto the next one.

“Say, while we’re here, does anyone know why Ms Fleming even resigned?” she asked. “I’ve been hearing a lot of different stories, and I’m pretty sure none of them are true.”

“I heard she ran away to live with her ex husband,” Martha said.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s true, Martha,” Betty said.

“I agree, there’s no way she _isn’t_ sleeping with a bunch of married men,” JD said.

“What makes you say that?” Duke asked.

“I just get that vibe from her.”

As they all discussed possible theories amongst themselves, Heather rubbed her lips together as the need to admit the truth was threatening to slip off of her tongue. Eventually, she couldn’t keep it in.

“It’s because of me,” she blurted out, and luckily didn’t entirely regret it.

“Because you punched her?” Betty tilted her head.

“No, because…” She bit her lip, trying to think where to start. She could just start from the conversation that they had shared in that 7/11 parking lot, but doing that wouldn’t have made much sense on its own. “It’s a long story?”

“I’m down for a long story,” Betty said, falling back against the back of the couch to get comfortable. “Tell me, how did you chase her off once and for all?”

Heather hesitated to start, which didn’t go unnoticed by Duke, who reached forward to place a hand on her arm. “Are you sure you want to share that, Heather?”

She scoffed. “It’s fine, Heather. They won’t run off telling anyone.” She cleared her throat, mustering up the courage to begin. “Okay, so, might as well start from the beginning. You know how Mac isn’t a cheerleader anymore?”

“Uh-huh?” Betty slowly nodded.

“Well, she lost that role because she got into a fight, and the guy who she fought was real pissed because, one, he lost a few teef,” she said in a cutesy, patronising voice, before returning to a serious tone, “and two, it was at a college party and he embarrassed himself. So he posed as a parent or something and called the school, and it got her kicked off. So to try and get her her role back, I tried to talk to the school about it, but I ended up letting it slip why she was fighting that guy in the first place.”

“Why was she?”

Heather licked her dry lips.

“He tried to date rape me.”

The room fell so quiet that she would be able to hear a needle dropping as loud as a crate, but she didn’t let that deter her from telling the rest of the story.

“So, oops, let that pretty personal detail slip to the school, and so they obviously told Ms Fleming about it,” she grimaced. “And so for ages, Fleming would be on my back, trying to get me to _open up_ or whatever about my trauma which, keep in mind, she thought was just me _nearly_ getting date raped. Already a scary thing, of course, but- um, nah, I’ll get to that. Keep it pinned.” She leaned back against the arm of the couch, staring up at the ceiling, her eyes trailing along the swirls and various patterns embedded in the white surface as she spoke. “Then I guess she got so inspired by me that she decided to dedicate a whole week based on me. I’d be flattered if it was anything but some possible trauma, but here we are. Oh, and of course, she wanted me to help out, and didn’t really give me a way out of it either, so I was stuck.” The more she told, the more she clenched her fists from anger, even though her hand was still delicate. “And so that landed me in that speech I did. Now, what that old bitch _didn’t_ know is that I wasn’t just _almost_ date raped, I simply wasn’t date raped _that time._ ” She snapped up into a sitting position to look at them all. “I’ll cut to the chase, I’m a rape victim, and I was put into a position where I had to stand in front of the school and talk about my trauma and act like everything was fine.”

She sighed as she lay back down, hooking one leg over the other as she let it bounce now and then in the air. “It’s why I was acting so weirdly when I did the speech, and why I did what I did. Not to excuse myself, I know what I did was wrong, and I should have done it. Hell, I should have just taken a sick day, I was just... “ She glanced at JD, who gave her a look of understanding. “Just so determined to prove I could do it. And I couldn’t, I was proven wrong, and it got everyone hurt.”

Her mouth was dry from all the talking again, and so she reached for her cup on the floor and paused to take a sip. It was then that she saw the horrified looks on Betty and Martha’s faces, both looking like they wanted to say something, but had no idea what. She rolled her eyes.

“You don’t need to pity me. It’s okay, I’m working through it, I just needed to give you context.”

“Um, before you do,” Betty spoke up. “Are you… okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, really, are you _okay?_ ”

“I’m… _coping,_ ” she replied. “I have a lot of baggage, but I’m working on it. Seriously, don’t let me dump it all on you, I’m trying to be _nice_ here. Let me tell the rest of the story.”

“O-Okay…” Betty slowly said, sinking back down the sofa.

“Okay, so then that leaves us to… last Thursday. Same day I came to speak to you two, actually,” she gestured to Betty and Martha. “I bumped into her outside of school, and she tried to apologise to me. Saying shit like, _oh, Heather, I never meant for you to get hurt, I was just trying to do good! I just want to save these poor, helpless students from themselves, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot!_ ” She cackled crudely at the mere thought. “I said bullshit, because of _course_ it was bullshit. All she wanted was to crack me, to try and fix me and resolve my trauma just to prove how good of a person she was, how much of a _hero_ she was. Because somebody who can crack _Heather Chandler_ must be good at her job, right? But you can’t be a hero with no one looking, can you? So she put me on TV and hoped I’d heal on the spot. So I called her out, I told her she was useless at her job, that she had done nothing but hurt me, and so on. I said a lot, I can’t remember it word for word.” She clicked her tongue. “So, me thinks that I put her off counselling for a little while. Just a hunch.”

There was another deafening silence in the room. Heather wasn’t sure what she expected everyone’s reactions to be, so she shouldn’t have expected anyone to know what to say.

“So basically, you’re taking credit for this party?” Duke eventually said.

“Exactly. I’m responsible for all of this.” She gestured vaguely to the house. “You’re all welcome.”

“Right. Well, um, good on you for telling her off,” Betty said with uncertainty.

“Yeah, that was really brave. I wouldn’t have had the courage to do that,” Martha commented.

“Eh, I’d reached my boiling point. I’m sure you all have one, and I think what I went through would be enough for everyone.”

“It’s still hard to speak up.”

Heather looked over to Martha and saw she was gazing at her with an expression she had never seen directed at her before, that being admiration. It caught her off guard, triggered sentimental emotions she hadn’t planned for tonight, and she dreaded the thought of opening up for more reasons than to take credit for something good happening to everyone.

Luckily she didn’t have to ponder on it for too long, because a loud yell further down the hallway, probably in the foyer from how it echoed, lured in their attention.

“LAST MAN STANDING OUTSIDE!”

“Last Man Standing?” Martha asked.

“Oh, I imagine Keith has a pool. You know that game where two people are balancing on a platform and they both have to hit each other with paddles or whatever? It’s that,” Heather explained.

“Oh! I wanna watch that!” Betty exclaimed, leaping onto her feet.

“It’s pretty amusing. I’ll come too,” Duke added.

“I kinda wanna watch,” Martha agreed.

“I _absolutely_ want to watch,” JD declared, looking at Heather. “You coming?”

“I…” Usually she would relish in watching two drunken idiots wack each other with a paddle to push each other into the water, but it was then that she realised that getting so riled up about Ms Fleming had put her off wanting to surround herself with such loud noises. The thought was irritable, to say the least. “I’ll catch up.”

“You’ll catch up?” Duke shot her a concerned look. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just need a breather after all that talk about Fleming,” she said. “I’ll be out in a bit, I promise.”

Duke narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Okay… but if you’re not out in fifteen minutes, I’m coming back to check on you.”

“No need to, but sure,” she scoffed dismissively. The three girls left, leaving her alone with JD, and at first, she forgot that the reason why was because she was blocking him from getting up. “Okay, I’ll let you go,” she said, swinging her legs away from the other end of the sofa to sit up normally. Unexpectedly, JD stayed put. “You’re free to go - I won’t keep you anymore,” she told him louder.

“You know you’re not keeping me, right?” he said in a soft tone that caught her attention. “I joke about it, but you’re really not that bad.”

Heather blinked, a weird sense of warmth growing in her chest. “I’m not?”

“No. I don’t feel obliged to stay with you - well, I sort of do, because of the whole dating thing, but it isn’t a chore. I like hanging out with you.”

“Oh.” She ducked her head to hide the smile that slipped through onto her lips. “Thanks. You’re… you’re not so bad yourself.”

JD chuckled. “And as much as I complain about it, I am actually grateful for what you did.”

“What I did?”

“For “dating” me. It’s… really helped. A lot. I tend to keep a lot of harassment to myself to not only prove I can deal with it on my own, because life’s so much easier when you don’t need to ask for help, but also because I don’t want to burden everyone, but I haven’t had that worry this week, and it’s nice.” He smiled at her, and Heather didn’t think she could ever cherish _JD’s_ smile as much as she did in this moment, but she did. “But, you know, even if your plan didn’t work, the fact that you at least tried is enough for me.”

“It is?”

“Sure. You’re doing your best, I can tell you’re trying to do better. You don’t have to, you have enough privilege to never send people like me so much as a second glance, but you do anyway.”

She shrugged. “It’s the least I can do.”

“Still. I can see what Veronica sees in you after about a week of being your “boyfriend”.”

She snickered, touched by his words. Wordlessly she shuffled closer to him, just for a moment, to lean forward and press a light peck on his cheek. She laughed right after doing it as if to reassure them both that it wasn’t serious.

“That’s much appreciated, sweetie, but I don’t want to keep you from your friends,” she cooed, batting her lashes. He turned to deadpan at her, a little stunned she’d taken it that far. “In all seriousness, I never have to do that again if that was too far,” she added.

“Nope, it was fine, just didn’t expect it.” He scratched his head. “I’ll see you outside then.”

“Yeah, I’ll be there soon.” She nudged him off the couch until he stood up. “Now go.”

She watched him leave, sparing her one last glance before disappearing behind the corner and closing the door behind him. She was left alone with the sound of muffled chatter and cheering and the bass of the music a few rooms over thumping through the walls. Letting out a long sigh, she lay back down on the couch, this time with plenty of room, and let out a long sigh as she gazed up at the ceiling.

\---

_“LAST MAN STANDING OUTSIDE!”_

Apparently it was a mistake moving into the foyer when they did, because it meant they heard that being yelled at the top of somebody’s lungs just a few feet away from them. Still, it was fascinating watching everyone flood in the direction to the back door.

“Last Man Standing?” Veronica asked.

“It’s when two people have to knock their opponent into the water! They both balance on a platform in the middle of a pool,” Heather explained. “It’s pretty fun to watch. Wanna come?”

“I definitely do!” Diego exclaimed. “Honestly that can entertain me for the rest of the night.” He grabbed Hale by the arm and began to pull. “See you there!”

“You’re going _now?_ ” Heather asked.

“I wanna get a good view!”

As he was dragged away, Hale waved them both goodbye before he was swept into the crowd. Veronica chuckled in amusement at the sight, up until his eyes landed on his friends, who she hadn’t seen since her talk with Betty from earlier, emerging from a hallway. Only Betty, Martha and Duke were present though. No JD and no Chandler, and it raised his curiosity.

“Oh, there’s Heather!” Mara exclaimed, having also spotted Duke. “Veronica, are you coming?”

“I…” His eyes drifted back to the hallway that they had just come from. “I might come in a sec. I just need a drink first.”

“Okay! I’ll meet you out there then? I wanna catch up with Heather.”

“Sure.”

She gave him a quick embrace before hurrying off to find Duke, leaving Veronica to ponder on his own. His feet felt as heavy as anchors when he was finally able to move towards the hallway, his nerves going haywire the closer he got. He paused just by the door frame that would lead down it, leaning against it as he tried to figure out what his next course of action was going to be, and while trying to figure it out, another familiar figure moved out from the hallway. He flinched backwards, thinking it might be Chandler, but it turned out to just be JD, completely solo. He blinked at him and smiled.

“You okay?”

“Yep,” he replied, straightening himself up. “Just, uh, alcohol.”

“Fair enough.”

He seemed to glimpse back down the hallway, before back at him, and wordlessly turned around and followed the rest of the crowd. Soon enough he was alone in the foyer, and it was unnerving how quiet it was. He wasn’t sure if it was the flickering porch light outside or the slowly swaying chandelier above him that motivated him to move into the hallway he had been staring at, or if it was some ulterior motive, but before he knew it, he was slowly making his way down the corridor. There weren’t many doors, two on one side, one of the other. Hesitantly, his heart racing from the thick anticipation in the air, choking him, he opened the first one. Inside was just a closet full of shoes and coats. He moved to the second door on the same side. Nothing much was in there either, just a spare room with a few bookshelves.

He finally turned to the final door, on the other side of the hallway, and slowly moved towards it. He held onto the doorknob for a few seconds longer than he usually would have, before saying _fuck it_ and pushing the door open.

Sure enough, inside, his eyes landed on a lonesome Heather, too busy staring at the ceiling to notice his presence. For a moment he considered using that to his advantage and just walking back out and pretending it never happened, but he forced himself to stay put.

“Aren’t you going outside with everyone else?” he spoke up, his voice sounding far too loud in the tense silence of the room. Heather jolted up in surprise to stare at him, eyes wide and expression stunned.

“Aren’t you?” she shot back eventually. Veronica fell quiet, and so did she as they took each other in, this time no longer wordless. Slowly, Veronica sauntered over to the couch, looking at the space Heather had left by sitting up.

“Is… is anyone sitting there?” he asked. Heather glanced to her side, before shuffling along, making sure to squish right on the edge of the couch, which stung a bit.

“No,” she replied, keeping her head down. Veronica hesitantly sat down, also keeping distance between them both, and for a long while, neither of them spoke. They both wanted to, clearly, Veronica could see by how Heather’s leg was bouncing anxiously, and how a million things were racing through Veronica’s head at once. Eventually, he settled on something he had wanted to say all week.

“I like your hair.”

Heather lifted her head a little to look at him.

“I like yours too.”

“Oh… thanks.” Veronica ran a hand through it. “Um… Heather did it for me.”

“Same here.” She bit her lip, eyeing him up and down. “Your whole look changed while I was gone.”

“Oh, um, yeah. It did.” Though there wasn’t much change in Veronica’s outfit today; he had worn his light blue layered skirt many times before, it was one of his favorites; he knew what she was referring to, that being his changes in appearances she would have seen all week. “Um, some stuff happened.”

“What stuff?”

It was daunting to tell her, even though he knew she would probably be fine hearing it, but at the same time, he had a dying urge to let it spill.

“I… I realised I’m trans as well,” he confessed. “As in, I’m not… I’m not a girl, at least.”

“You’re… you’re not?”

“But I’m… I’m not a boy either,” he said, wincing as he looked up at her. She seemed interested, though still confused. “I’m… I’m non binary? So, like, I’m in the middle. I think. I don’t know, I’m still working things out, but I know I’m not _just_ a boy or _just_ a girl. I.. I kind of identify with both, if that makes sense.”

There was a short pause. “I… I think so? I think I get it,” Heather said. “So, you’re like a mixture between a boy and a girl?”

“Precisely.”

“Okay, I see that.”

“Huh? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, I just see it.”

Recognising that old teasing that she would always do warmed Veronica’s heart with a bittersweet sense of nostalgia, bitter in that he had to hold back the need to chuckle.

“I… I use he/him pronouns now too. And they/them,” he went on to explain. “I still use she/her, so don’t worry about using those either. I’d just prefer it if you switched around? I don’t know, it’s validating.”

“Sure, I can do that,” Heather said. “That explains Heather saying they and them all the time.”

This time Veronica didn’t stop himself from huffing with amusement. “Well, now you know.”

The silence that fell on them after that was even thicker, more suffocating. Perhaps because they desperately wanted to keep the easy conversation going, but they knew they couldn’t, not with the looming cloud over them. After far too long of the quiet, Veronica felt himself break and open his mouth to spill the can of worms squirming on his tongue, desperately trying to wiggle out, but was stopped by Heather beating him to it.

“Look, Veronica, I’m sorry,” she blurted out, lifting her head up to stare at him remorsefully. "I… I don’t know what else I can say, other than I’m sorry, I’m sorry that I hurt you, I’m sorry I hurt your friends, I’m sorry I’m such a shitty person. I know I am, I’ve always known I am, but I never did anything about it, not until some selfish reason made me want to stop.” She seemed to crumple under Veronica’s gaze, it was almost heartbreaking. “What I did was selfish and stupid. You were right, I only cared about myself, and I’m trying to fix it, and I think it’s working, but… but I get it.” Her lip started to quiver, so she bit it to still it. “I could try my very hardest to make amends and it may still not be enough. It doesn’t have to be for you, you don’t have to forgive me! I understand if you don’t, I understand if you never want to talk to me again.” Her eyes grew glassy the longer she stared at him, every word clearly paining her to say, but she kept going. “I’ve hurt a lot of people, I hurt your friends, you’re right, I’m a bad person. I… I don’t know how to be a good person, not yet, but I want to be. But you’re not obliged to stay, you’re not obliged to teach me how, I promise I’m not trying to win you back, I’m just trying to do a bit of good.” She sniffed and squeezed her eyes shut to push the tears out. Veronica tried to speak, but Heather beat him again.

“Just… just know, if you came here to break up with me - for good this time - I’ll respect it, I won’t bring down hell on the school. I just want you to walk away knowing that… that you’re one of the best things to happen to me, and that I’m so, so sorry I couldn’t be that for you.”

She shut her eyes again, this time looking like she was bracing herself for impact. Veronica knew exactly what, and also knew that it was stupid to do so, because the thing she was waiting for wasn’t coming. Instead, the thing that hit her was… him, falling onto her shoulder and holding her close, in a tight hug, one that could have been cutting off her breathing and Veronica would have no idea, because he was far too focused on how much he had missed just _holding_ her. He couldn’t hold it back, tears started to pour from his eyes and his shoulders bounced with his shallow breathing as he could only grip her tighter.

“Um… Veronica?” Heather asked with uncertainty. “What… what does this mean?”

“I’m sorry, Heather!” he blurted out, lifting himself up to gaze at her with watery eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’ve been such a selfish idiot-”

“Veronica, no, I- what are you apologising for?” Heather blinked at him in confusion.

“I… I was mad at you at first, and yeah, I was right to be mad, but it… it stopped being about you. It all started being about me - I made it all about me. I just wanted so badly to get rid of my own guilt that I deflected it all onto you that I lost sight of what I was supposed to be angry at you for. I was being so, so stupid, I’m just a stubborn, proud, do-good bitch.” He tried to wipe away his tears, but they were flooding out quicker than he could count each drop. “I know you’re trying to do better, I can see that, I could see it all week and just refused to acknowledge it, and I’m sorry.” He took a moment to control his breathing. “I shouldn’t have tried to be above it all. It’s like I said - I’m no better than you. I shouldn’t have tried to act like I was. I’m just… I’m just human, like you.”

Heather just stared at him in bewilderment. “Have I changed enough for you?” she asked quietly.

“I- God, Heather, no- I mean, I didn’t want… you don’t need to change.” He cupped her face gently. “You… you need to be nicer, sure, but that’s it. Please, _please_ don’t feel like you need to change yourself. The Heather I know is… mean, sure, but she’s also passionate and so, so caring and funny and has never given up in her life.”

Heather scoffed. “Not everyone would agree those are such good qualities.”

Veronica frowned. “You don’t have to change for anyone, Heather,” he murmured. “You’ve been hurt… you’ve been hurt a lot. Don’t feel like you need to redeem yourself from the things that happened to you. Just… I only ask that you don’t let yourself be somebody who hurts others in the same way… but I can see you’re already trying to do that.”

Heather’s hand came up to touch his. “So I’m okay?” she asked softly. “I’m doing enough?”

“Of course you are,” he whispered. “You were doing something wrong, but that doesn’t mean you were doing everything wrong. I’m sorry if I made you feel that way. I’m sorry I left you when you were still in a weak mind state… I promise, you’re already doing enough.”

Heather huffed weakly. “That would have been nice to hear about a week ago.” The hand that had come up to touch him moved away clenched into a fist, before folding back out again. Veronica had already seen that it was bandaged, but he had forgotten about it until now. He was surprised she was still wearing it - he assumed she’d just nicked herself with a knife or something.

“Why? What happened?”

Heather grimaced. “I… I didn’t want to tell you, but while we’re here and crying, I probably should. Um…” She moved away from him to stare at her hand. “So, relating to what you said, I started to spiral quite a bit the other day, and… to make a long story short, I dissociated in front of a mirror, woke up, and my hair was short, mirror was broken, and my hand was bleeding.” She flicked some of the ends of her hair. “That’s how this happened. It didn’t turn out like this by me holding a broken mirror shard though, Heather made it look nicer for me.”

Veronica’s heart dropped. Mara had been right - something terrible had happened to cause her to lose half of her hair, and he hadn’t been there to find out what.

“I… Heather, you could have just told me that you hurt yourself and I would have come running right back-”

“I know,” she cut him off. “It’s why I didn’t. I know self harm is… an important issue for you, but I didn’t want you to come back because you wanted to pity me. I wanted you to talk to me again because you wanted to. And since we’re talking now… I thought I might as well.” She smiled sadly. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt so badly anymore. Just don’t squeeze my hand.”

More tears welled up in Veronica’s eyes. “Why… why did you dissociate?”

“Because of what you just said,” she replied. “I thought… I thought _everything_ was wrong with me, that me fucking things up was inevitable, that to fix everything, I needed to change everything about myself. Right down to everything my parents had drilled into me. I don’t know… I was sure I needed to redeem myself, but I had no idea how.”

“I only wanted you to stop hurting people. Nothing more,” Veronica said. “You’re not some villain in need of a redemption. You’re a teenager who’s suffered a lot of abuse and trauma. All you need is to learn how to be kind. Or, kinder, I should say.” She found her hand and held it - tightly, since it was the one with no bandage. “You’re already doing that, so please, don’t feel like you need to prove yourself by overcoming every monster you’ve faced.”

Heather’s hand squeezed his. “Thank you,” she murmured. “I needed to hear that.”

Veronica smiled, and so did she.

“Would have made a great villain backstory though,” Heather then said. Veronica snorted.

“Heather, _no-_ ”

“I would make such a great villain. I already wear a lot of red, what do you think my evil power would be?”

“Heather!” Veronica laughed, the last of his sad tears escaping, replaced with happy ones. Fuck, he’d missed Heather making him laugh, he had felt so lifeless without it. So lifeless without _her._

“Fuck, I…” When he stopped laughing, he found himself drowning in that blue gaze he had tried to float above for the longest time. “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much.”

“No need to get corny on me-”

Veronica cut her off with a kiss. It was slow, it was soft, it didn’t let her go. His hands remained on her cheeks, thumbs brushing over her plethora of freckles. Heather leaned into the kiss, almost desperately, as her hands landed on his waist to pull him in. Feeling her lips against his only lured more tears from his eyes, but none of them were sad, not anymore. They were relieved, so, so relieved to have her back, to not feel guilty for loving her, to just be able to love her again. Granted, he never stopped. He couldn’t.

One of his hands found her thighs, the other sliding down to her back, and his arm slipped under her knees to lift her onto his lap. She squeaked that adorable, embarrassed sound she would always make when he (very easily) flustered her, and he kissed her again. She wrapped her arms around the back of his neck and pulled him in, her hands brushing through the shorter hair there.

“I like you with an undercut,” she mumbled into the kiss with a smile. “And bangs. It’s cute.”

Veronica felt himself flush. “I like you with short hair.”

“You do?”

“It’s adorable.”

“It’s too short to wear my scrunchie,” she said with a pout, which he kissed to make disappear.

“You don’t need it.”

Heather seemed to get a little lost in Veronica’s gaze, before affectionately brushing some of his hair out of his face.

“I like you on a motorcycle,” she whispered. “It’s hot.”

“Oh,” he smirked, leaning towards her again. “You think so…?” As he was speaking, the door to the room began to open. “ _Shit!_ ”

He threw Heather off in a panic, which she yelped in protest at, only to see that the person who had stepped into the room was Duke, staring at them both as Heather climbed back onto the couch, disgruntled at having been tossed onto the floor.

“Sorry, Heather,” Veronica whispered.

“It’s _cool,_ I guess,” Heather grunted, crossing her arms before looking up at Duke. “Oh hey, Heather, guess what?”

Duke blinked at them both, stunned. “Are you about to tell me the answer I’m hoping you’re going to say?”

“I imagine so.”

“Okay, cool, let me just…” She walked over to the other couch and flopped forward, landing lifelessly on her stomach and letting out a loud groan. Veronica and Chandler exchanged a concerned look.

“Did we break her?” Heather asked.

“Yes!” Duke barked, voice muffled. “Please, _never_ go on break again.” She lifted her head slightly to glare at them.

“No, I don’t think we will,” Veronica said, shuffling closer to Chandler. “This hurt.” He bit his lip. “And you were right, Heather. I know I apologised before, but… you were right. About everything,” he said.

“I know.” Duke sat up, brushing her stray hairs from her face. “From this we’ve learned that you should always listen to me.”

“Heather, they didn’t have any Sprite left so-” The sudden sound of Mara’s voice made them all turn their heads towards the door. She stood at the doorway, holding two cups and a befuddled look on her face, particularly when she looked at Veronica and Chandler. “What… what’s going on?”

“ _Mac!_ ” Chandler exclaimed, leaping off of her feet and throwing herself on her. It caused her to stumble backwards and some of the drinks to spill out of their cups. She still looked surprised.

“What’s happening?” she asked again. “I’m so confused.”

“It’s over, this whole thing is over,” Chandler said, her tone overjoyed. Mara widened her eyes, stepping back from her.

“You and Ronnie are okay?”

“Yeah, we are,” Veronica said, smiling. A huge grin spread across her face, and after quickly placing the two cups on the floor, she fell into Chandler’s embrace.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry I stopped talking to you, Cherry!” she whimpered. “I wanted to, I really did, I just-”

“I know, you were just trying to do the right thing,” Chandler said, resting her chin on her head. “It’s fine, I don’t care… honestly, no more apologies tonight, I don’t think I can take it.”

While they had their moment, Duke came over and leaned against the arm of the sofa Veronica sat on.

“I’m offended she hasn’t realised what this all means yet,” Duke whispered to him.

“Huh? What does what mean?” Veronica looked up at her, and Duke replied by gesturing to Chandler and herself.

“You know, assuming that’s _okay_ with you,” she said.

The realisation made Veronica have to remind himself to not gasp out loud. “Of course it’s okay. More than okay.”

He looked back at Chandler and Mara to see them sharing a firm kiss, before breaking apart. They still seemed a little distracted with one another though, causing Duke to sigh loudly and impatiently as she walked around Veronica to flop onto the couch.

“Heather, I know you missed her and V, but quit sucking Emmy’s face and celebrate with me.”

Chandler blinked at her, confused. “Celebrate what?”

“Do I have to spell it out? No more breaks, no more sides, no more complicated relationships in this group.” She studied her nails. “Is it not clicking what this can mean for us? If you still want it, that is.” She glimpsed at her hopefully, and Veronica saw the exact moment of realisation in Chandler’s eyes, with how wide and fervent they grew.

“Do… you still want to?” she asked.

“No shit I want to.” She stood up and marched over to her, not giving another chance for her to speak before grabbing her by the collar and pulling her down to kiss her. Chandler seemed to melt under her touch, and Veronica could hardly blame her, with it being the first time she could show such affection with her and knowing that things wouldn’t fall apart. Though, it did give Veronica the opportunity to catch Chandler’s eye and smirk, mouthing,

_“I told you so.”_

It earned him a middle finger, before she returned to holding Duke close. Mara bounded over to Veronica, hands jittering happily as she sat down next to him.

“So, everything’s good?” she said, gazing at her girlfriends fondly.

“So long as those two remember to breathe,” Veronica quipped, before gazing at Mara longingly. He took her hand to get her attention. “Hey, um, despite everything… thank you for sticking with me. Even when I was being a dumb bitch about this whole thing.”

Mara smiled at him, planting a peck on his lips. “It’s okay, we all have our dumb bitch moments.” She looked back to Chandler. “Now, Heather?”

They parted just for Chandler to respond.

“Mhmm?”

“Why did you cut your hair?”

Chandler froze. “I… I just went through it all with Ronnie, and I don’t want to bring down the mood. Can I tell you later, honey?”

“Sure, okay.” She looked back to Veronica. “I’d offer for you to come outside so we can try and catch the end of Last Man Standing, but you have eyeliner… _everywhere._ ” She attempted to rub it off his cheeks with her thumbs, and while some black smear did come off, Veronica imagined it did very little.

“Huh, yours isn’t too bad, Heather,” Duke said, gazing at Chandler’s makeup, and the lack thereof black tear stains down her cheeks.

“I… wore waterproof eyeliner. Just in case something like this happened,” she confessed.

“ _Just in case?_ ” Veronica echoed.

“I’ve been wearing it all week! Look, I cry a lot, it’s for the best.”

“Well, I _don’t_ cry a lot, so I am completely unprepared,” Veronica grunted.

“Yeah, I’ve only seen you cry once," Mara commented, still trying to wipe away the eyeliner.

“And I've just never," Duke added.

“Is it that bad?”

“Hold on.” Chandler hurried out of the room, with the three of them migrating to the bigger couch while she was gone, and when she returned, she had one hand holding wet tissue, the other holding something Veronica couldn’t see. He found out when she lathered soap all over his cheeks, before wiping it off with the tissue.

“There. Fixed.” She tossed the tissue, which now had a large black smudge on it, aside, so she could hook her arms around Veronica’s neck and settle on his lap again.

“Thanks, love,” Veronica snickered, resting his head on her shoulder. Heather rested the rest of her body on Mara and Duke’s thighs, which they welcomed with amusement, and though there was an entire party to enjoy outside, none of them wanted to move. Having each other’s company was something they hadn’t had in far too long, and something they didn’t want to waste by diluting it with other invasive, loud teens. The four of them held each other, relieved to be able to do so, completely at peace, until a loud bang from outside made Heather jump.

“They’re letting off fireworks?” She listened for another sound, which sure enough came in pursuit of the first, whistling before it exploded. “Probably for the best we’re not out there.”

“I’d rather stay here,” Mara purred against Duke’s shoulder, running patterns across Chandler’s thighs.

“Me too,” Veronica murmured into Chandler’s neck, having missed her warmth against him. Making them all flinch, though, wasn’t another firework, but the door opening again. Veronica didn’t throw Chandler off this time, which was good because it was just JD standing in the doorway, awkwardly.

“Oh… am I interrupting something?” he asked.

“Kinda,” Veronica replied. “Why?”

“I needed to run from the-” another loud bang made him jump, tensing up. “ _Fireworks._ And I lost Betty and Martha in the crowd.”

“Aren’t loud bangs one of your triggers?” Chandler asked, unravelling herself from Veronica.

“...Yes.” Another fray of noises went off and he winced, looking genuinely in distress. “I’ll be okay, I just needed a distraction somewhere _away_ from them, but it’s fine if you’re too busy to-”

“Shut up, you’re not burdening me with your troubles,” Chandler scolded, hopping onto the arm of the sofa, leaving a small space between her and Veronica. “Now sit.” She pointed to the spot, and JD obeyed without question. “Okay, what can we do to help you?”

“Just distracting me should be fine? But aren’t I getting in the way of-”

“ _Ssshh._ Mac, talk about a hyperfixation.”

“Huh?”

“Just go on a huge tangent about one of your interests. Don’t hold back.”

“Oh, um, okay!”

Veronica chuckled fondly as Mara began to ramble on about different properties of crystals, listing them all and describing each one of them by colour, texture and shine. It was surprisingly fascinating to listen to, maybe just because he loved the sound of Mara’s excited voice, but he was also paying attention to the tender way Chandler had offered to hold JD’s hand, squeezing it every time there was a particularly loud noise that made him jump. Veronica helped with hooking his arm around his, stroking it gently with his fingertips.

And though it was Mara who was talking, Veronica couldn’t stop focusing on Chandler and her need to take care of JD. It was something to admire, something he had missed seeing from her, and something that was still surprising to see being done with one of his close friends who she had presumed she had hated.

“JD?” Again, the door swung back open to reveal Betty and Martha. “Oh, there you are- huh?” Betty looked at the group in astonishment. “What did we just walk in on?”

“We made up, we’re all together now, yadda yadda yadda,” Chandler replied. “Yes JD is fine.”

“Hi. I’m fine,” JD said, waving. “Okay, I’ll get out of your hair now.” He stood up and walked over to them, Chandler immediately sliding back down next to Veronica once he was gone.

“You sure you don’t need to go home? They’ll probably be lighting fireworks for a while,” Betty said.

“But that means pulling Heather away from a party _she’s_ responsible for,” JD said. Veronica shot Chandler a look, as did Mara.

“You’re responsible for this?” he asked.

“More like, responsible for Ms Fleming leaving,” she said smugly, studying her nails. Veronica leaned forward.

“I need more details.”

“I’ll tell you when we’re back at Mac’s house. Come on, we’re taking JD home. I dragged him here, after all.” She stood up and pulled her car keys out from - well, Veronica would have said bra, but her strapless dress said that she wasn’t wearing one.

“Really?” JD asked.

“Yeah, come on.” She snapped her fingers towards the door as she swirled her keys around her finger. Her girlfriends - did Veronica count as a girlfriend anymore? He wasn’t so sure - all stood up to follow her.

“I’ll just say goodbye to Hale and Diego first!” Mara exclaimed, before dashing off, while the group made their way towards the front door.

“You can’t just leave me hanging,” Veronica said, hooking an arm around Chandler’s. “What did you do to Ms Fleming? Other than smash her nose to pieces.”

Chandler smirked that incredibly attractive smirk that he could finally let himself be enamoured by again.

“Just another reason to love me.”

Veronica, despite the location and the risk, linked his fingers with hers.

“That’s already a long list already, you know,” he whispered. Heather gazed back at him softly, a grateful smile on her red lips.

“Thank you for reminding me.”

Once outside, the group separated, that being, Veronica stood by his motorcycle while the rest of them walked over to Chandler’s car, though not before Veronica tightly hugged every person, even though two of them apparently would meet him at Mara’s house later anyway. It didn’t matter, because parting from Chandler again was something he didn’t want to do, not even for the drive home.

Soon enough Mara returned from the house. She hurried over and planted a kiss on Duke and Chandler’s cheeks through the open windows of the car. Veronica smiled at them both wistfully as Duke drove the car away, continuing to wave until they were out of sight.

“So,” Mara said, shoving her helmet back on. “My house?”

Veronica grinned. “Your house.”

“Do you know what we’re doing?”

“Not yet.” He put his helmet on and hopped onto his bike, as did Heather. “It doesn’t matter to me. All I know is that we’re together again.”

He started his motorcycle up.

“And that I’m just so happy that we are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's finally out!! the final chapter of this arc. after a whole year it's finally done.  
> writing this arc has been tough but still very enjoyable. so many moments in this arc i planned right from the start back in 2018 and i enjoyed finally being able to execute it. thank you to everyone who read it, this was the most challenging arc i've written in TAG so far, what with the heavy subject matter and all. i hope you all enjoyed it and i look forward to writing the next one :] (wish i could say it won't be as angsty,,, but i cannot)
> 
> but also, more things! i slowed down a little with this chapter, but don't worry, it wasn't because i'm losing interest (though this chapter was tricky to write) it's because i'm working on another writing project !!! it's not a fanfiction, it's mine and my girlfriend's original work :] i am super excited about it and i cannot wait to publish it as a book. i'll give updates if y'all are interested (though please keep in mind that it will be an 18+ fiction, so don't be putting it on your wish list if you're a minor please). feel free to send me any asks about it on my main blog (@notaguitarfret on tumblr).
> 
> as always, comments are much appreciated, and thank you to all readers, new and old, for sticking with me during this super long and intense arc. onto the next one !!! (it's a Mac arc 👀)

**Author's Note:**

> i bet you all thought this would be flooded with angst huh. well think again.
> 
> also while you're here, i recently made a TAG animatic !!! i've been wanting to do one for a while and i finally got one finished :] if you'd like to check it out, here's the link!!
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umFtbF6RWPw
> 
> comments are much appreciates, as always :]
> 
> https://heathersgameoftag.tumblr.com/


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